Samuel Benoit

Above is my very first experiment in making a timelapse video. It captures the team from Ethiopian educational media company Whiz Kids Workshop setting up a classroom library as part of a crowdfunded project to bring their high-quality educational material to government schools. The social enterprise is known across Ethiopia for their wildly popular educational public television series for kids, Tsehai Loves Learning – a show often referred to as “Ethiopian Sesame Street”.

I recently wrapped up a few months living the startup life with Whiz Kids Workshop in Addis Ababa, where I focused mostly on marketing, communication and grant writing. I also had the chance to do things I had never done before like creating a branding policy and designing packaging. Below is a design I did for a package that includes four educational books and a corresponding DVD.  

The left side promotes the other books, DVDs, posters and flashcards that make up the Tsehai’s Amharic Alphabet Library product line.  Kids can write in their name and details on the left side and use it as a notebook cover that features the character Tsehai from the show.  
I’m still in Addis and currently wrapping up a consulting project for One Planet International School, helping them iron out aspects of their governance, conceptual framework and financing as they prepare to take their school to the next level.

Where the equilibrium in highly-developed North American markets seems to leave itty-bitty opportunities only discernible to the most creative and ambitious entrepreneurs, market the opportunities here in Addis and Ethiopia are as big as canyons.  The only things that stand in the way are the significant friction imposed by government procedures and the need to wrap one’s mind around the informal and rapidly changing networks for getting products and marketing messages to customers.  Not for the faint of heart.