Chapter

Haripur: two cohorts, a mini-MBA and a cobblers’ cooperative idea

Between September and November 2013, Peace Through Prosperity ran two mini-MBA cohorts for 70 Haripur street cobblers, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, followed by three months of one-to-one coaching. A proposed cobblers’ union was reshaped into a cooperative idea and left with the community.

Haripur was one of four districts surveyed in 2012 for the Mochee Project, Peace Through Prosperity’s original study of street cobblers across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Haripur’s own programme is one part of a body of work that has reached more than 4,000 micro-entrepreneurs since 2012.

Before the classroom

A district already surveyed

Around 100 street cobblers in the Haripur district had been surveyed in the summer of 2012, as part of the wider Mochee Project fieldwork. Programme delivery followed more than a year later: the Haripur project began in August 2013, with only part of its budget raised before mobilisation started. Rather than teach straight away, the team spent a first week inducting cobblers and briefing local community leaders, a trust-building step judged necessary before any classroom work could start, which pushed the planned start back a week, to Monday 9 September 2013. Partway through mobilisation, Cutting Edge, the UK trade magazine for shoe repairers, ran a feature on the project.

Area surveyed, 2012 Pilot sample
Rawalpindi 300 (4 rejected)
Chichawatni 30 (2 rejected)
Haripur 100
Darra Adam Khel 14 (data pending)
Total sample engaged 444 (6 rejected)
Usable responses 438
Usable, excluding Darra Adam Khel 424
Target sample 500
The 2012 pilot survey sample, by area.

Cohort 1

40 Haripur street cobblers, five days, September 2013

The first cohort’s mini-MBA ran from Monday 9 September 2013, taught by PTP trainer Nazish Zahoor, over five days rather than the four the mini-MBA runs today. A total of 40 Entrepreneurs of Circumstance attended: an opening day addressing participants’ doubts and introducing PTP’s objectives, core business-growth tools on day two, and, on day four, a session on finance and financial planning, when participants received sales ledgers for record-keeping. The cohort closed on day five with a graduation, stools for the cobblers and their customers, and basic tools and supplies for every participant.

Cohort 2

30 more, from 16 September

Cohort 2 began on Monday 16 September 2013 and followed the same five-day structure, closing with days four and five together. Against an original working budget for 50 street cobblers, the two cohorts together reached 70, a gap the team called “epic”. Three months of one-to-one coaching, mentoring, monitoring and evaluation began the following week, on 23 September 2013.

After the classroom

12 weeks of coaching, and an idea left with the community

Local mobilisers Ghulam Rabani and Anees Lodhi, who had recruited participants for both cohorts, stayed on through the coaching phase alongside the PTP team, running one-to-one coaching visits, monitoring and evaluation. The Haripur team went further than earlier cohorts in Rawalpindi and Islamabad had been able to. Rather than leave cobblers to face extortion and eviction from pavement pitches alone, as those earlier participants had, PTP helped Haripur’s cobblers organise: building on an early exercise in collective buying of supplies, the team began drafting paperwork to register a street cobblers’ union for the district, open to cobblers beyond those who had taken the mini-MBA. No union was formed. The idea was reshaped into a cooperative and left with the community.

What changed

51% average revenue growth, 83% average profit growth

The Haripur project closed at the end of November 2013, once 70 Entrepreneurs of Circumstance had taken the mini-MBA and three months of coaching. Of the 70, 63 stayed with the programme to the end, a drop-out rate in line with PTP’s earlier cohorts, and it is their results that were measured and reported.

70
Entrepreneurs of Circumstance engaged

Across two five-day cohorts in September 2013.

51%
average revenue growth

Across the 63 who completed three months of coaching.

83%
average profit growth

Over the same three-month coaching period.

Within those averages, 48% of the 63 grew revenue by more than half and six more than doubled it. For profit, 65% grew by more than half, 20 more than doubled it, and three more than tripled it within the three months.

The field notes

Read it as it happened

The programme was written up week by week as it ran.