Building a Team

V-Lab's efforts in building local capacities. 

Everything that V-lab has been doing for the last 2 years aligns with one vision, and that is to develop the local's capacity. From creating and launching projects to training participants to mentoring coaches; Our style of teaching and getting information across is through a mixture of training and coaching - Which we believe we are the only association that is doing this in Vanuatu. 

V-lab's goal in the last year was to train as many Ni-van coaches and trainers as possible and that has been working out great through a collaboration with Breadfruit Consulting. 
Chris Elphick is the man behind the scene that has been working closely with our In-training coaches. His role is to mentor the coaches, focusing more on developing the soft-skill than their hard-skill. He believes that while one may possess all the knowledge to deliver a good coaching session, it doesn't necessarily make them a good coach. To be a coach you need to have that relationship - People need to respect you and you need to be able to understand them so that you can meet them where they are at and communicate at a level where you can help them achieve their goal and perform to their fullest potential. 

​( Chris Elphick with V-lab coaches and staff )

So far we have around 11 local In-training coaches. Our method of choosing a potential coach does not stem from the idea that they are a good person or has done a lot of great things, but is more to do with their business background. One thing that if not all, but most of our coaches have in common is that they are involved in business and management. Either they are managing a business, running one, or both. V-Lab is confident in its team and has created balance in terms of age and gender, with its coaches possessing numerous hard-skills, including but not limited to :

• Financial skills,
• Marketing and Management skills 
• Agricultural skills
• Customer service and 
• Leadership, Team-work and strategic planning.

When interviewing an in-training coach, Joel David, he summarizes his experience with a quote,
"Our goal as business coaches is to empower entrepreneurs in a way where they can move by themselves and be confident in their own ability and journey."​

Our Coach and Trainer of the year -
(Taken from December 2021 newsletter article).
Velenie Jacob has joined V-Lab as an incubee in 2020 through the Scaling Frontier Innovation incubation program. She is now one of our lead coach and trainer and works with V-Lab to deliver some training sessions on Financial Management and How to find finance. She coaches some incubees under Yumi Growem Vanuatu.

Velenie works as a Finance officer for Vanuatu Investment Promotion Authority. She founded her own company "Narara Consulting", aiming to bring up small businesses to a standard where business owners are capable to understand and compile book-keeping for their businesses as well as be able to understand business finances better. Her slogan is "Brekem silence. Tokbaot finance". Velenie is currently working with V-Lab to develop our Finance Nakamal, aiming at delivering tailored training on financial management to individual and businesses on a pay-for-service basis. ​

Moving Forward.
2021 was all about getting the team to feel like a team. Lots of team bonding activities, including a retreat which was held in December. The objective behind the retreat was to engage the team in discussions to reflect on what we have achieved together so far and what more we can do to be better in delivering our services and providing only the best for our incubees.

2022 for V-Lab and its team of coaches and trainers is about moving forward and doing more structured development. Providing training on topics such as; emotional intelligence, empathy and communication. 
V-lab in collaboration with Breadfruit consulting plans to provide qualification on coaching that will be recognized internationally. This is in our goals for 2023 and will target anyone that is looking for a career in coaching - not just business wise, but also personal, life skills and more.