Elsie Mwimba

As a Volunteer Board Member Fundraising through events and various fundraising including;

• Represented organization at industry conferences and events.
• Collaborated with other board members to develop and execute programs and initiatives to advance organizational mission.
• Set, enforced, and optimized internal policies to maintain responsiveness to demands.
• Organized and detail-oriented with strong work ethic.
• Developed strong communication and organizational skills through working on group projects.
• Demonstrated strong organizational and time management skills while managing multiple projects.

• Provided strategic direction to country's entrepreneurship and enterprise development efforts, ensuring achievement of country's ambition, aligning with country's priority including climate entrepreneurship and digital innovation portfolio to regional countries of Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Zimbabwe in enterprise portfolio.
• Ensured strategic cohesion, coordination of programming efforts, and knowledge sharing of enterprise and climate development activities across country program.
• Developed Enterprise development strategy using Theory of Change component for country roadmap.
• Managed risks related to Enterprise Development programming and proposed mitigation plans to Headquarters through National Office
• Overseeing delivery of country Enterprise Development focused programs and partnerships including private sector and government line ministries.
• Provided support to existing and upcoming partners to strengthen implementation of inclusive access to financial services and developed database for tracking.
• Developed all-embracing access to Finance approach to create coherence and continuity in advancing financial inclusion for youth and enterprise growth through development of tools to support operation.
• Lead conversations with partners throughout program design & delivery by providing insight and expertise on the digital economy with private sectors such as Mobile Money, TNM and FDH Bank Institutions.
• Provided expertise on medium small entrepreneurs including to support design and implementation of inclusive access to finance, skills, capacity building, and market systems for country.
• Manage relationships with key partners, institutions, and stakeholders and facilitated sharing of expertise and lessons learnt across program, teams, and area experts through coordinated working groups.
• Promoted culture of innovation and agility that facilitates development of partnerships that create impact on scale such as national small and business development institute
• Promoted clarity to effectively leverage power and potential of digital technology as growth sector to create jobs and as enabler to ensure efficiency and effectiveness that led to 34 jobs created through Mobile Money enterprise.
• Developed strong relationships with government at national level, regional and districts entrepreneurial communities and entrepreneurship support institutions to strengthen impact-oriented platforms for entrepreneurs to increase participation and growth of Malawian youth-led and young women-led enterprises.
• Documented insights and experiences and share them with partners and donor agencies including MasterCard Foundation team through various platforms (internally and externally).
• Lead performance management for Enterprise Development team and contributed to performance management of partners.
• Facilitated coaching and mentorship with empowerment and directed reports to be productive, efficient and deliver organization's mandate to youth including adherence to priorities for short and long term goals and objectives
• Lead redesigning of programs and initiatives that enabled work opportunities for young people in priority sectors such as agriculture that led to 41 jobs created through climate smart agribusinesses including livestock.
• Collaborated with colleagues across functions, countries, programs, and senior leadership to deliver and enhance organization's enterprise development expertise in accordance to values and prioritizing specified partnerships.
• Led job creation of 14 youth through on and off-farm related enterprises including green economy to youth led business groups and TEVET vocational skills entrepreneurship
• Engaged in research on approach to scale up access to affordable loan finance for youth micro-entrepreneurs in various enterprise sector in Malawi and Ghana.
• Facilitated Business Incubation Center for Agro-Tourism for Youth Group and provide linkage to GIZ for synergy
• Lead the negotiation of agro-cooperative business incubation and marketing, digital & innovation through signing MOU with private sectors; TNM Mobile Money Payments for youth stakeholders and Standard Bank Cashless Payments for organization.

• Successfully led in country portfolio management, designing, and development of project proposals, project evaluation and learning, budgeting and donor reporting
• Led to development of 2 organization policy documents in Gender and Procurement and enhanced Gender strategy for organization at Global level
• Supported strategic, leadership direction to Executive Leadership Headquarters to USAID consortium and development of Project Senior Management Team in Malawi
• Coordinated embedding of gender analysis and systematic use of gender-sensitive tools, agricultural practices, and business tools in program cycle
• Managed compliance tracking of work plans, budget spend, internal controls audit, donor reporting – USAID Malawi Mission
• Led country staff recruitment, external consultants' appraisals, and international volunteer deployment and development of KPIs for Malawi staff
• Co-facilitated and trained 8 producer cooperatives, 3 marketing cooperatives and 1 Financial Cooperative in Southern Region of Malawi
• Co-facilitated Gender Analysis and women value chain, facilitated trade fairs and commodity trading through B2B meeting at International and National level
• Actively participated in development of Cooperative policy under Malawi Ministry of Trade & Development of Cooperative Curriculum for LUANAR University
• Facilitated women farmer Cooperatives in Marketing and Producer and facilitate grant proposals for external funding $270,000.00 awarded under USADF
• Facilitated establishment of 1 farmer credit union in Malawi
• Facilitated Credit Guarantee facility for 16 Women Smallholders farmers for Farmer Business Group to Eco Bank through Global Communities OPEC credit guarantee funds.
• Led staff team building in Washington, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Kenya
• Conducted regular reviews of operations and identified areas for improvement.
• Mentored and guided employees to foster proper completion of assigned duties.

• Reviewed technical guidelines to verify compliance with CDP donor standards.
• Provided ad-hoc security training and development of cooperative manual guide for field operation.
• Evaluated technical control manuals and operational documentation with organization standards.
• Assessed risk for new project proposals, suggesting liability mitigation efforts where necessary.

• Advised technical team on Vanilla value chain development on various elements of project and offered support to quickly resolve issues.
• Worked closely with senior leadership teams to align organizational objectives with overarching project goals.
• Facilitated workshops to collect project requirements and user feedback on Vanilla value chain in collaboration with Mc Cormick Company and USAID donors.

• Assisted training of youth cooperatives in business development services BDS
• Developed Project training guide for youth skills development.

• Roles and responsibilities
• Project Management and implementation, project designing
• Report writing, budgeting, knowledge management, evaluation and learning, Theory of Change & Log Frame Development; Capacity building, coaching, mentorship, recruitment and appraisal.