Training
Streams of Income Business School
The union runs a school for its members, because a cooperative only works if the people who own it can read what they own. The school teaches the same system the union runs on: how money behaves, how a business is read, and how a member comes to hold more than one income without gambling on any of them.
Wealth is predictable when somebody shows you the working
The union's position is simple, and it is worth stating exactly so that nobody hears more in it than is being said. Making money is not as difficult as most people think. What makes it look difficult is that the working is usually hidden — the figures, the order things are done in, the questions that were asked before the money moved.
The school shows the working. It is not a theory: it is what this cooperative does with its own money, taught to the members whose money it is. The union holds equity in food businesses alongside its members, keeps a weekly savings record in every cluster, and closes its year on 31 December. Every module below comes from one of those habits.
What the school does not say is that you will become wealthy, or that any project will pay a particular amount, or that a rate on this website is a promise about your life. A school that made those claims would be the very thing the last module teaches you to avoid. What it offers is competence: after it, you can read a business, price a small one, and decide for yourself.
It is also the fifth point of the union's vision — to train members in a business school that teaches how to earn multiple streams of income — so it is not a side activity. It is one of the five things this union exists to do.
“Making money is not as difficult as most people think. It is difficult to do alone.”
The teaching the school is built on
Who teaches it, and from what
The school teaches from the union's own operational terms, from the papers for whatever project is open, and from the accounts of the businesses members hold shares in — not from a motivational syllabus. When a figure is used in class you are told where it came from and you may ask to see it, and where a document has not been published yet you are told that instead of being given a number to take on trust.
You may bring your own questions
Members are encouraged to bring a real decision to the room: a project brief they are weighing, a small business they are running, a savings plan that is not holding. Teaching against a live question is the point of the school.
The curriculum
Six modules, in the order they are taught
The order matters. You learn to read a set of books before you are shown a project, and you learn to tell a cooperative from a scheme before anyone asks you for a subscription. Open any module to see what is covered and what you should be able to do afterwards.
You cannot own part of a business you cannot read. This module teaches the documents every cooperative must produce, and how to ask for them without feeling rude for asking. Members practise on a real set of cooperative accounts, read out loud, line by line.
In the room
- The balance sheet: what the assets are, what is owed, and what is left for the members.
- The income and expenditure account: why turnover is not profit and profit is not cash.
- The members' fund: share capital, reserves, and why a growing reserve is better news than a large dividend.
- The financial year: what closing on 31 December means for the books, and what an audit does and does not prove.
- The register: how a share entry against your name is recorded and how you check yours.
What you can do afterwards
Pick up any cooperative's accounts, find the three figures that matter, and ask two questions that a weak set of books cannot survive.
The union's own terms, taught as arithmetic rather than as promises. Most disputes in cooperatives come from members who never separated the money they lent from the money they invested. This module separates them for good.
In the room
- The ordinary share at ₦1,000, and what subscribing the minimum 100 shares on a project makes you.
- Savings: weekly, uninterrupted, captured online, with 30% annual interest paid at the end of your financial year after twelve months.
- Loans: what three months of consistent saving entitles a member to ask for, and what a loan costs the cluster that funds it.
- Dividends: paid from what the cooperative's businesses earn, distributed at the financial year end, to members with active and uninterrupted savings for twelve months.
- The difference that matters: interest is what you are paid for lending; a dividend is what you are paid for owning.
What you can do afterwards
Say without notes what every naira of yours is doing, which condition it depends on and which date it comes back on.
The union invests along one chain: production, processing, packaging and distribution. This module treats that chain as a business with costs and losses, not as a slogan. Members bring market prices from their own town and cost a unit with them.
In the room
- Where the margin actually sits at each stage, and why raw crop is usually the thinnest part of it.
- Losses that are not theft: spoilage, weight lost in drying, breakage, and shrink between the farm and the market.
- Storage and timing: why the same bag is worth different money in March and in October, and what storage costs.
- Offtake: who has agreed to buy, at what price, and what an agreement is worth when it is not written down.
- Costing one small unit end to end, with the figures members brought to the room.
What you can do afterwards
Price a small food business on paper before anybody asks you for money, and say which stage of the chain your money is safest in and why.
Multiple streams of income is the phrase everybody uses. This module teaches the arithmetic under it and, more importantly, the order. Members who add incomes in the wrong order usually end up with none of them working.
In the room
- What an income costs to hold: time, capital and attention. Naming the cost before adding the stream.
- The order that holds: one steady income first, savings that are never interrupted, then equity in a business.
- The surplus rule: deciding what happens to the money left at month end before it arrives, not after.
- What to refuse: any income that needs constant recruiting, any income you cannot explain to your own household, any income that depends on a stranger's honesty.
- Writing your own schedule: what you hold now, what you are building towards, and the date against each.
What you can do afterwards
Leave with your streams written out in order, a cost against each one and a date against each one — the same page your back office fields are tracking.
The union opens a new project every quarter and members are asked to subscribe at least 100 shares to activate it. This module is the one that stands between a member and a decision made on excitement. A live project brief is pulled apart in the room until it either stands or falls.
In the room
- The papers to ask for: what the project does, who runs it day to day, what the equity is, and what has already been spent.
- Unit economics: cost per unit, price per unit, and the volume needed before anything is earned at all.
- The downside question: who carries a loss, and what the members' 80% of the equity means in a bad season.
- Liquidity: money in equity cannot be called back on Saturday. Sizing a subscription you can genuinely leave alone.
- Saying no: how to decline a quarter without leaving the union, and why declining costs a member nothing.
What you can do afterwards
Decide on a project in one evening and defend the decision either way, to your household and to your cluster.
Most people in the room have lost money before, or watched somebody close to them lose it. This module gives you six tests you can apply to any promoter in five minutes. The tests are applied to Requiza first, out loud, including the answers the union cannot give yet.
The six tests
- Registration. Is it registered as a cooperative, and can you see the certificate with your own eyes?
- Books. Does it publish accounts to members, and is there an audit behind them?
- Income. Does the money come from trade — something bought, made or sold — or from the deposits of the next people to join?
- Recruitment. Are you paid to bring people in? If yes, walk away. In this union nobody is paid for a downline.
- Assets. Can you go and stand in front of the thing your money bought?
- Receipts. Did your entry go into a book you are allowed to inspect, and did you get a receipt the same day?
What you can do afterwards
Ask any promoter six questions in five minutes, and have the discipline to leave when the answers do not come — including if the promoter is standing in a Requiza cluster.
This is the outline of what is taught. The union has not published a timetable, a fee or a list of venues on this site; how to ask for them is set out under “How to find a school and attend it” below.
How to find a school and attend it
The union's instruction to members is to locate any Streams of Income Business School near you and attend. There are two honest ways to do that, and both of them go through people rather than through a page: your cluster, or the union office.
Ask at your cluster
Clusters meet every Saturday at 5:00pm. Your financial secretary knows which school serves your cluster and when it next sits. Ask in the meeting, so the answer is heard by everyone who needs it.
Or write to the office
Send your name, your membership number if you have one, and your town to requizacooperative@gmail.com. If there is no school near you yet, say so — that is how the union decides where the next one opens.
You are told when and where
The office or your secretary gives you the sitting, the venue and anything you need to bring. Confirm it back to them so your place is recorded against your name.
Attend, and bring your figures
Come with a notebook, your own numbers and a real question. A member who brings a live decision gets more from one sitting than a member who only listens.
What to bring
- A notebook and a pen. The school is taught with working shown, and the working is worth copying.
- Your own figures: what you earn, what you save each Saturday, what you owe. Nobody is asked to read them out.
- Your phone, with your back office open, if you already have one. Several sessions use your own fields as the example.
- The project papers for the current quarter, if you are weighing a subscription.
- One real question. Bring it written down; questions dissolve when the room is full.
Cluster meeting · every Saturday, 5:00pm
Nobody can sell you a place
The union has not published a fee, a venue or a calendar on this site. Until it does, treat any demand for payment for a place at a school as unverified: ask the office at requizacooperative@gmail.com before you pay anyone anything, and tell your financial secretary who asked you.
The school on the record
- Name
- Streams of Income Business School, run by Requiza Cooperative Union
- Who may attend
- Registered members of the union. If you are not yet a member, ask the office before you register.
- Venues
- To be published
- Calendar
- To be published
- Tutors
- To be published
- Fee, if any
- To be published
- How to ask
- Your cluster's financial secretary, or requizacooperative@gmail.com
Four details above are marked “to be published” because the union has not published them yet. They are not being withheld. Ask the office for any of them and hold us to the answer.
Who it is for
Three members who should be in the room
The school is open to every member of the union, at any stage. These are the three who usually get the most out of a first sitting.
The member who just registered
You will be offered a great many opportunities this year, and some of them will be dishonest. Start with module six and module one, and you will be able to sort them yourself instead of asking who to trust.
The member who saves but has never subscribed
Your savings are working at the published rate and your discipline is already proven. Modules two, three and five exist for the step you have not taken: reading a project well enough to decide, calmly, whether to put equity into it.
The cluster officer or financial secretary
You keep the weekly record that every member's position is built from. Module one is your module: the accounts you help produce, read from the members' side of the table, so that you can answer a hard question in a meeting without sending it to the office.
Before you come
What the school will not do for you
A school that promises wealth is selling something. This one is teaching something, and the difference is worth setting out before you give up a Saturday for it.
It will not make you rich by attending. It will not give you a rate of return, a tip, a signal or a name to buy. It will not tell you that any figure on this website is guaranteed — the union's published terms are terms, with conditions attached, and the school teaches the conditions as carefully as the rates.
It will also not tell you that recruiting people is a way to earn. Nobody in this union is paid for introducing a member. If a session ever suggests otherwise, report it to the office; that is not the school the union runs.
What it will do
Teach you to read a set of books, price a small business, size a subscription you can afford to leave alone, and ask six questions that expose a scheme. That is competence, and it is worth more than a tip.
- Streams of income What activating a stream means, and what an upline can see. Read
- Savings, shares and dividends The money terms the second module is taught from. Read
- Operational terms The union's rules in full, with every condition attached. Read
- Find your cluster The Saturday meeting where a school is arranged. Find