UN WOMEN : Restart it All women – Lighting the Last Mile in Asia, Africa and Latin America
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It is estimated that 840 million people worldwide are still in off-grid place, the vast majority in relatively poor and remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and South Asia. Many people have lived in complete darkness during night, some families with high income have chosen to buy kerosene lamps and candles.
Li Xia and her company based in Shenzhen ,are dedicated to providing a safer, brighter and affordable clean energy lighting to the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) people in Asia, Africa and Latin America who are in lack of a stable electricity supply. The brightness of kerosene lamps are too dim ,they have also released a ton of carbon dioxide in five years, polluting the environment and causing fires. Even no epidemic,BOP are difficult to pay.When it’s under the epidemic,their purchasing power has down sharply.Li Xia and her team have reconstructed their mind to explore a new mode of foreign trade under such tough situation.They have stick to the original aim- Lighting The Last Kilometer of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In the beginning of the epidemic, I was concerned about the business and also worried that if workers have been infected ,the factory would be sequestered.I was pregnant with my third baby at the time, and as a nearly 40-year-old pregnant woman, only a few hours were for sleeping. ‘Would I get infected ?Would my baby be affected if I was always in much pressure ?’
The resumption of work was repeatedly delayed because of the epidemic. One of the necessary conditions requested by the government to resume work is the enterprise should have disinfectant, alcohol, masks, hand sanitizer and other essential epidemic prevention items. The truth was all epidemic prevention materials were short of stock and pretty high price. What happened often was once we learned the places selling epidemic prevention supplies and came to buy,all had been sold out. We searched for different channels to purchase disinfectant, masks and other essential items for the resumption of work.Finally we had prepared enough of these items after spending much cost,then completed the review and inspection of documents as soon as possible, and we became one of the first batch enterprises who had been identified to qualified for resuming business.
On the first day of work I said to all the staff, our most valuable wealth, a group of good employees and regular buying clients with fully trust in us,has made Power-Solution has been here for fifteen years. With the unity of our will, we can survive.
The real difficulty came up one by one after starting work: the shortage of workers in the production workshop, 28 orders waiting to be completed, the original 60 people in the production workshop then only 9 workers returned to work in time; price of raw materials increased pretty much due to temporary suspension; some clients canceled orders,some of them delayed the shipment;a batch of goods, worthy RMB 400,000 is also backlogged in the company’s warehouse.
In the following days,order canceled, no cash flow, I began worrying that if the workers’ wages could not be paid as scheduled.Power-Solution is a production-oriented enterprises, the front-line workers are hand stop mouth stop state.We all have the pressure of life, some workers have to feed their whole family with their salary.Our clients are abroad,it means I should handle the jet lag.I followed up several main customers myself every day, they all persuaded me to rest more.
Looking at the piles of products in the warehouse, I just had one idea: Survive. no matter what it takes,I must keep the cash flow going smoothly and keep everyone moved.
We actively searched for alternative domestic suppliers of raw materials as more options, contacted foundries to organize production and tightly control quality.Meanwhile ,Power-Solution was also trying to apply for loans from banks. However, the loan applications were eventually rejected .On one hand,there are large numbers of applications, on the other hand most of our clients are from high-risk developing countries, although they are all long-term partners who have always paid on time . At that tough time, the capital chain relied on self-production completely. Once there were clients with non-payment behavior due to the epidemic, the company’s capital chain and cash flow would also face a huge challenge.
The 127th Canton Fair had been our turnaround. This year, abroad development plan had been canceled, the 127th Canton Fair had changed to be online, we used this opportunity to do a series of preliminary preparations, not only expanded channels to reach clients, the development of new types of multinational customers, but also had got the supplier qualification of some well-known large enterprises and successfully got their order around RMB 1 million ,this powered us a lot.During the short supply of masks and other PPEs, we also contracted a mask production line. The first was to increase the market supply of masks, the second was to alleviate the imminent interruption of the cash flow emergency.
The Black Swan incident also made us aware of some problems that existing in the company.We had optimized our internal processes and systems, broadened our product lines, developed new products with antibacterial and antiviral functions specifically for the epidemic during the period of resuming business;all stuff were forced to work from home remotely and started experiencing digital empowerment journey.All of those were unimaginable for a traditional manufacturing company.
Business women have faced even tougher challenges in this outbreak, and I admire their resilience. Many of the female employees are already mothers, and it’s not easy for them to juggle work and family. Many mothers were forced to leave their jobs to return to their families during the epidemic; those who did not return to their families were also exhausted every day. So I really hope that society and families will give more support and recognition to women.
Despite the challenges, Shenzhen Power-Solution,as one female-led company,had finished a tough but positively restart.We have no layoffs, no pay cuts or shutdowns,but with a number of new hires and new customers. I also successfully gave birth to a healthy baby. My girl has been over 50 days old and still under exclusively breastfed.
This era should give more support to women. If they are given a fair chance, women can also achieve great performance with their own efforts and strengths.
