I noticed that many of my readers are not aware that I have been having a monthly entrepreneurs grant.

Many entrepreneurs, young inventors and upcoming business people are most of the time restricted by the availability of funds or credit.
The Kenya government has come up with many credit programs most of which are still channeled through the same banking system and are therefore being subject to the normal bureaucracy and red tapes that surround the banks lending procedures.
In view of this fact I am giving out between Kenya shillings 50,000 and 100,000 every month from my earnings for a deserving Kenya development project on capital for investment.

The project to be considered should give out returns, create jobs opportunities and advance the life of any one of my readers. One condition is one should have a bank account.

What are the qualifications and the procedure? That your project should be profitable, create jobs and be either a going concern or a new venture.

How can one apply for this grant? Just go to my Esther Passaris site complete the form and submit it online.

Once the applications are in, a team of mentors will look into them and come up with one deserving project for that month. Right now we are working on the July entries and I will meet all the applicants where I will announce the winner of the grant for our first month which is July 2009.

Monday this week I attended the talk by CK Prahalad on the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. This talk was quite an eye opener but the government role is key to its success.
Today the government of Kenya went a step ahead and launched the water irrigation project to address food shortage by making Kenyans less dependent on rainfall.
By the way only 30 % of the viewers on Kenya Television Network ( KTN ) had confidence in the government’s intentions. I celebrate a step in the right direction and I want to believe good is possible?
On a sad note Lake Naivasha is drying up, lets pray for rain? Most of our rivers are drying up and this is truly a situation we need to start addressing and fast!
What is your take? What can we do to reverse this trend

While en route coming home I decided to stop in Dubai at the Atlantis Hotel. It is amazing how many young Kenyans are working and earning a living that pays them double if not triple of a similar job back home.
But more than that it gives them an opportunity to work and earn an honest living. This is the resilience you find with Kenyans.
It is nice that they are so happy to see fellow Kenyans which reaffirms to me that our bond as a people is being Kenyan. It is not in our tribe or party? That is the patriotism that we should preach and practice back home, that we are one people united by the same values each of us hold dear in our heart!

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I visited Bangalore, India for a franchise exhibition where my hope was to sign up a few franchises for our youth and also for other hard working Kenyans.

One of the areas that Driving Kenya Foundation will embark on when I come back home is to start the drive for 1 million jobs. This will not come easy, for success we have to work hard to transform our mentality & attitude to help us derive work ethics within us that can drive and see us dedicate & commit ourselves to reach our goals of a perfect Kenya by 2015.

One thing we need to cultivate are debates on issues that will serve the best interests of our people, whether The Hague, Local Tribunal, TJRC, Mau Forest or review of land tenure systems & jurisdictions. The best discussions are those that will help us transform ourselves individually and also collectively.

In response to the Entrepreneurs Grants that was launched a few days ago, applications are beginning to pour in from all over the country.
We will wait for a cut off number before we start to short-list the applicants.
The short-listed applicants will be contacted via email and a further selection will be made to determine the winner or winners of the grant. Keep the applications coming and spread the world so that we can have more innovative and well deserving applicants getting their chance at this grant.
Please visit Esther Passaris website, to complete the grant application form.

Earlier in the month I posted about giving a chance to one or more Kenyans to go for their dreams through a monthly grant. Although micro finance is available in the country it is not accessible for all.
This grant is my way of helping some Kenyan to achieve their dreams and create employment.

I will mentor the winners and I know this will make a difference. If you want to participate in this grant complete the application form which is found at Esther Passaris website. Please note that all the fields are mandatory. If you do not have an answer to enter in any box then fill it with N/A.

Spread the word so that we can have as many participants as possible. Who knows this could attract some of our young inventors and youthful entrepreneurs out there.

Good Luck!

Life in Kenya is worrying as the incidences and headlines we awake to are just as frightening as can get. From suspicion and allegations of paedophile priests to evangelists being charged with pornography. Rising insecurity, you keep hearing of carjacking, extortion through sms, school kids being kidnapped with ransom requests of millions of shillings, among many other evils. If one is involved in an accident, stopping might just mean death for the motorist. Stealing of fuel from transformers and overturned tankers and
the subsequent blackouts, fires and burns is becoming a national preoccupation! Hunger and many of our brothers still dying from it.

One is bound to ask where are we going as a nation?
Where are we as a people heading to?
Who can come and lead us to Canaan, and remove us from this mess we have gradually sunk into?

Things cannot be allowed to deteriorate any further or we risk
following the many nations in Africa like Somalia who have ended up with non functioning governments and that just is anarchy!

What do you think we can do? We have shouted ourselves horse in
the press, we read it and see it daily in the media. Whose
responsibility is it to make the changes required to reverse this
unfathomable crisis we are trending right now?

This is a challenge to all of us not to tire but at every opportunity
endeavour to be heard until someone, somewhere, hears us and starts
ACTING!

Every time my son is angry, I tell him baby you are carrying very big rocks you need to get them off your back and we work on it together because today even an empty rack sack is heavy now imagine one filled with massive heavy rocks?

We all carry rocks from past experiences, from harsh words, to just the daily stresses of life that we don’t know how to get rid of. So we carry them along and it gets heavy to go through life.

I have come to accept that it is easier said than done to off load the rocks. We want to not just carry our rocks but also hide them in our rucksack, keep them close to our hearts and life. Sometimes we know that letting them go will hurt those we love. So we just carry them. Sometimes we feel they are a part of our lives, our history. But they are not. History can be left on a shelf to refer to and reflect. Not on your back. And if it’s a great part of your life, then bring it forward and store it into your heart and share it. Don’t carry the weight. Even a rucksack gets heavy.

So what’s on your rucksack? How are you going to reduce the weight? How are we going to help each other take longer strides? You know you cannot take the strides you want with all that weight on your back. Don’t kid yourself. I did. It’s a waste of hours, years and generations.

Countries also carry rocks that stop the country moving forward, Kenya has rocks from colonel wrongs, to land issues, to poverty and hunger, corruption, internally displaced citizens and as we had more to the rucksack we stop Driving KENYA.

Let us get back to you and I and our individual rocks, is it not time to let go and continue the journey through life?