Tunawiri Pamoja’s “Young Women's Business Program” in Mumias town, Kakamega county, Western Kenya aims to develop young Kenyan women’s capacities for long-term success by providing knowledge, skills, resources, and tools regarding land and property rights, family planning, as well as basic business and leadership skills.
Word about the program spread fast. 60 young women – mostly informal traders – were interested in joining the program, and 25 were recruited. Many others showed up at the training venue wishing to participate in the program, prompting the organizers to take contact information for 15 young women interested in joining the second phase of the project.
In February 2023, the program kicked off with an introductory session for each of the three focus areas: sexual and reproductive health and rights, entrepreneurship, and land and property rights. This session provided an opportunity for the young women to get to know one another, interact with their trainers, and get an overview of the program. The three topics will be covered sequentially, over six months, with workshops taking place twice a month.
Four of the young women in the program took part in a business pitching event organized by a non-profit in the neighboring Mumias East Constituency. They reported that the experience was an eye opener and a good opportunity to network with other young people who have innovative ideas to solve problems in their communities. All of them look forward to the session on online business to help them capitalize their sales through online platforms.
Most of the participants had not celebrated International Women’s Day before. We marked the day by sharing information about this important yearly event and this year’s theme. The trainer for the day shared an online application to track menstrual periods, unknown to any of the young women.
At the beginning, participants were shy and didn’t feel upbeat about themselves; therefore, we turned to positive affirmations to boost their self-esteem and confidence. The young women were asked to share words they feel best describe themselves and women in general. We summarized the collected words into the following:
We are strong.
We are beautiful.
We are smart.
We are powerful.
We are valuable.
We are superwomen.
We recite this joint affirmation every time we meet to enhance our self-confidence and improve our self-esteem. The young women are also encouraged to say the affirmation out loud during the week while looking in the mirror.
Entrepreneurship is the first focus area, addressed in the spring of 2023. The Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) model has been introduced to give these young traders an opportunity to create a savings culture and facilitate borrowing from a common lending pool. VSLA is a transparent, democratic, and structured process where participants save together and take small loans from those savings. Through this initiative, the young women will be able to hold leadership positions in the VSLA, set a financial goal, as well as save and access loans to boost their business. The VSLA training and oversight are provided by Tunawiri Pamoja and entrepreneurship trainer Ibrahim Karim, who is a qualified VSLA Trainer of Trainers by CARE International.
The young women are also being taken through business plan development, step by step. For most of the trainees, coming up with a business plan is a challenge. SWOT analysis helps them build strengths as well as identify weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; various presentations build their self-confidence. The end goal is to create individual business plans as roadmaps for structuring, running, and growing the businesses these young traders engage in (mostly sellers of used clothes, fresh produce, fish, and cooked food; there are also small-scale operators of a laundry business, a modeling agency, and garbage collection).
Failing to plan is planning to fail. In due time, the young women will create their own vision boards for the future encompassing such elements as financial and spiritual well-being, business growth, and personal development.
Together with the VSLA initiative and the complex training received, the vision boards will be instrumental in changing not only the lives of the young women trained and of their families but also of others: the young women will take on mentees, passing on learned skills and knowledge to other traders and adolescent girls in Mumias.
We thank all of our Faithify donors for making this program a reality!
Please watch these two short interviews with two of the participants in the program to learn more about who they are, what business they are in, and what their dreams and hopes are for the future. Please click on CC to enable closed captions (subtitles).
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