In honor of World Day of Social Justice, let’s take a look at how our focus on people has enabled us to continue supporting Maasai as they overcome life in the unforgiving, beautiful land they call home.

Seeking People-Specific Solutions

The area where we work in Keyna, central and southern Kajiado County, may seem limited. But with scarce resources and social isolation, the people who live there need our help the most. These resources include basic necessities, like water, that we don’t even think about. And because people live so far away from each other, the cost to obtain these resources is usually out of reach.

Only after we learn about a community and its culture can we offer the best method of assistance. Therefore, we drive on rough roads to rural locations, set up chairs in the shade, and listen to what people have to say. Once we realize what their needs are, we figure out ways to help them help themselves—whether that’s by constructing boreholes, offering income-generating programs and training sessions, or, in some circumstances, just distributing food.

Ways We Help

The projects and programs we offer have evolved since WILK started operating in 2007. We began with Clean Water (WASH) Projects, since water is the key to living in this semi-arid region. But water isn’t free, so a steady income is also a necessity for Maasai living near our boreholes. We began the Livestock as a Business (LAB) Program as a way to mitigate the cost of maintaining the boreholes, which is part of the reason why our water projects are so successful.

Our LAB program is also important because there are no Maasai without cattle. The income in this region comes from livestock, and people needed better skills to manage their herds. Livestock benefit from fresh water, disease treatment, and grass storage. We’ve developed LAB lessons to teach different methods that improve cattle quality and, therefore, bring in more money from the market.

We also don’t leave people in the lurch. For instance, when we realized that widows were struggling to meet their daily needs and couldn’t obtain their rightful land, we developed the Hope for Widows Program. By developing businesses, widows could afford their land deeds and take care of themselves and their children. All of these programs work because we take a personalized approach to serving Maasai communities.

Facing—and Bringing—Challenges

Every now and then, someone needs a boost. Considering the many obstacles Maasai face, we are constantly listening and learning about outside factors that might hinder progress for program participants. Last year, for instance, we noticed that some of the women in our Hope for Widows program weren’t saving money for their businesses. Remember that most of them were still dealing with the three-year-long drought that plagued Kenya. Instead of saving and reinvesting their profits, women were using any profit from their businesses to pay for personal expenses like food, school fees, and other daily needs.

It became clear that they needed an incentive to save more money (and keep their funds separated). To inspire greater savings, we pitched a savings competition: the five women with the highest savings would have their savings doubled. A few weeks later, we checked their savings boxes. The top earners had saved between $20 and $30 (around 2,000 to 3,000 Kenyan shillings). They were running strong businesses, their savings were doubled, and they were proud of themselves.

What we’ve learned from our community development work over the past 17 years is that empowering others is a formula. We design ways to help them succeed, and we celebrate them with each goal they achieve. These women bore the brunt of the drought head-on and, against the odds, they were able to turn a profit, send their kids to school, and save money on a shoestring budget. We’ll continue to help them navigate problems like climate change and poverty because we know they can succeed.

We Can Do Even More

There’s so much we take for granted in the United States—clean water, a prosperous economy, substantial rain. But in Kenya, none of these are guaranteed. Our presence on the ground and our commitment to help these communities flourish is still needed.

But unlike other organizations who care about numbers more than people, WILK puts Love into Action. We always keep the beneficiaries—who are real people—at the heart of what we do because they deserve to live in a stable environment, have access to clean water, earn an education, and practice their cultural traditions.

We care about our Maasai friends in Kenya and want to help them thrive. We’ll continue to serve them in ways that make sense culturally, strategically, and personally. And we’ll continue to find new, exciting ways to support them as we work together, along with our donors, for lasting change.

The post How to Affect Lasting Changes: People-Centered Work in Kenya appeared first on Water is Life Kenya.

Meet Koyiaso

Koyiaso is from Oltome village in Amboseli. She is an active woman of 45 and has four children. She lost her husband four years ago and joined WILK’s Hope for Widows Pilot program in July 2022. Whenever you see Koyiaso, she is carrying on her back a big load of textiles and clothing which she sells from village to village. From the profit she earns through her business, she buys food and pays school fees for her family. Koyiaso has also saved enough money to make improvements to her home. She recently built a fence to protect her family from lions and even piped water from the nearby borehole to her house.

Koyiaso said, “Before I joined WILK’s Hope for Widows program, I was shy. I felt hopeless. Now I have ideas and can talk in front of people. I am able to make a profit and manage my business. I have enough knowledge so that my business won’t collapse when I have big expenses like school fees. I am known as a business lady, where before people would avoid me because I had nothing.”

Koyiaso has blossomed as she built her business with the grant she received from WILK. When she talks about how grateful she is for the chance to change her life, she cries. She had a hard time since losing her husband and didn’t see how her situation could improve. But now, hope is alive!

Empowering Widows through Business Skills

In the Hope for Widows program, we train women in business skills, self-empowerment, women and family health, and their rights as widows. After training, we award a cash grant of $150 to start their small businesses and three goats to start their herds. Based on our 2022-23 pilot program results, we found that a one-time donation of $800 means a woman receives $2,400 in benefits through increases in four key financial indicators: income, assets, savings, and business inventory.

1. Increase in Income – Women went from an average of $50 per month to $200 per month. This means $1,800 more per year for these women and their children.
2. Increase in Savings – Most women began with $0 in savings. Now they are saving $50 per woman in 6 months. This is growth of $100 per year.
3. Increase in Assets – After receiving goats, their livestock assets have grown from an average of 2 goats per woman (worth $120) to 6 goats per woman (worth $360).
4. Consistent Inventory – With this new financial discipline, women can maintain inventory, run their small businesses consistently, and keep their customers coming back.

Additional Benefit: Improved Household Nutrition

In addition, we have seen significant improvement in household nutrition. Before the program, women were eating two meals a day, one of which was only a cup of tea. But by July 2023, they were eating two meals a day with real food, like vegetables and ugali, rice and beans, corn and beans, or porridge with milk, along with a cup of tea for breakfast. Now they are strong, healthy, and energetic. And when we asked how their quality of life had changed, the women told us that their confidence, hopefulness, feeling of belonging, and belief in their ability to “handle things” had increased.

They Could Use Your Help

So many more women need the training and grants, especially due to the inflation of staple food
costs, a weak Kenyan currency, and drought causing poor harvests. Widow-led families feel the pressure even more than others. Providing skills and seed money will boost these women and build resilience so they can thrive in an uncertain environment.

Your gift of $150 will provide money for a widow to start her business; $460 will fund one year of training; $800 will support a widow in her first year of the Hope for Widows Program, including the grant, goats, and training.

Together, we can do even more. Any amount you give will be put towards our work of Helping Kenyans Bloom. Thanks to you, widows in Kenya can care for themselves and their families with dignity and hope.

The post Hope for Widows Spotlight: One Woman’s Journey as a Businesswoman appeared first on Water is Life Kenya.

Why Goats & Grants?

You may be asking: Why goats and grants…again?

Last November, the first round of Hope for Widows participants had their Goats & Grants ceremony. Since then, they’ve been running their businesses, saving money, and reliably providing for their families.

The goats (two females and one male) are long-term investments for the widows. These women need to build capital and livestock is still a good investment in the region. Having a built-in savings account that compounds over time—especially as they have babies!—is a key component of increasing capacity.

The grants are short-term cash infusions to help jumpstart the widows’ small business ventures. With these grants, they are able to buy what’s necessary to stock their shops, as well as any raw materials needed for production.

Giving, and Giving Back

At this ceremony, a total of 32 women, 15 from Ogulului and 17 from Amboseli, completed the Hope for Widows training over the summer. Sessions primarily covered business strategies to help the women learn how to build savings and how much to invest into what they’ll be selling. There will also be a training session in the future dedicated to women’s health issues.

Each widow received a grant of $150 (about 20,000 Kenyan shillings) and three goats (two female, one male). The money is to be invested in their businesses, so they have 10 days to make a supplies list and purchase what they need. The goats are additional collateral that give the women a source of savings.

Here’s an example of what was purchased with the grant:

Two Groups, One Heart

Now, where do the baby goats come in?

Some of the goats distributed in November did what goats do—and had babies. With grateful hearts, the widows who own these goats decided to “pay it forward.”

Each widow with multiple babies gave one baby goat to a woman in need. There were plenty of smiles, tears, and happy dancing when the handovers happened. For us, seeing this level of reciprocity is a dream come true.

At the ceremony, women distinguished themselves by the length of their participation in the Hope for Widows program. Those who completed their training last year wore blue shukas while new participants wore orange. Women from the pilot group also gave baby goats to friends who needed a boost of help. Overall, the ceremony became a celebration of the hard work all these women have done so far.

Past Success Leads to a Future With Hope

Speaking of hard work, Group 1 of the Hope for Widows participants is nearing the end of its first year. We recently traveled to Amboseli and the Kilimanjaro Highlands to check in with these groups. While surveying their experience thus far, we asked about the most impactful skills they’ve learned. Two answers were repeated: making a profit and becoming self-reliant. 

Despite the long drought that’s been plaguing Kenya, these women managed to make enough money to cover their expenses, and then some. Last year, the widows would often skip meals to make sure their kids ate. Now, they’re eating every day. They received their second grant earlier in August and, with their experience, they know how to put it to the best use possible.

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It’s a Small World, the saying goes — so small, in fact, that CoroAllegro hopes to take you “Around the World in Eighty Minutes” at its choral concert later this week. 

This amazingly diverse and intense collection of folk and local music, packed into a program less than an hour and a half in length, spans six continents, 15 different cultures and 11 languages.

The program is mostly locally grown folk music —  a wild Scottish dance, a tender Korean love ballad, a sentimental American tune, a popular Argentinian bossa nova, an evocative Estonian ode. There’s a Ukrainian shepherd song, driving and intense; a hand-clapping Arabic invocation of praise; an anguished, layered musical poem where tribal Aboriginal folk struggle with the overwhelming confusion of modern, civilized chaos. 

And there’s the sweet, sentimental Irish ballad “Danny Boy.”  Around the world with your head still spinning, but home in time for bed!

“There is so much unique cultural expression that comes through the music,” says Sam Stein, CoroAllegro’s interim music director.

The group’s hope, he says, is that music brings humankind together into community. 

Consider a Ukrainian shepherding song, set against a Russian folk dance — two songs from countries currently locked in a death match. Challenged to justify his programming decision, Stein said, “The people who made the music have no animosity toward one another.”

CoroAllegro is something of a musical institution in the area.  Now in its 36^th season, it has established a reputation for creative and sometimes unusual programming. The group has been known for taking chances, chorally speaking, including commissioning a number of new works from local and nationally known composers, and presenting challenging pieces from outside of the traditional canon. 

Recent offerings include “Madrigal Mystery Tour” (a Beatles review), “Fifty Years of Disney,” and an entire program featuring women composers.

“We are trying to bring the music to a broader audience” says Becky Kelly, board president. “Through partnering and collaborating with local groups, we support the causes that we believe in while we make the best music we’re capable of.”

CoroAllegro (loosely translated from the Italian — “Merry Choir”) is a labor of love for its singers, who include both professional musicians and experienced amateurs. Periodically, it expands its chamber choir profile to become CoroAllegro and Friends, inviting singers from the area to join in putting on larger-scale works with orchestral accompaniment. 

Speaking of partnering with local groups, CoroAllegro is sharing the platform (literally) this time with Water Is Life Kenya (WILK).

This vital Newark-based nonprofit is focused on getting water access for the indigenous and drought-stricken Maasai people of Kenya. 

“We have 27 active clean water projects, and we’ve been able to serve about 80,000 people,” says Aaron Lemma, operations and outreach manager. “Our new program, Hope for Widows, helps make survival possible for women who have lost their husbands.” 

As an added bonus, Joyce Tannian, co-founder and executive director of WILK, also happens to be a well-known vocal artist.  She’ll join the group and perform the solo part on “Sigalagala,” a Lua spiritual praise song made popular by the Muungano National Choir of Kenya.

It’s not just a small world.  It’s a fragmented, fractured world.  CoroAllegro keeps hoping that holding up the unique musical voices of our variety can also reclaim what makes us all human together.

CoroAllegro presents “Around the World in Eighty Minutes,” Friday, April 28, 7:30 p.m., at Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Newark. Also, Saturday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at Concord Presbyterian Church, Wilmington. Tickets available at coroallegro.com. CoroAllegro is funded in part by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts.

Carl Burnam is a tenor with CoroAllegro.

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Aware that these widows were vulnerable, our team strategized about how best to support them. It was when recent land use laws changed that we sprang into action. The law caused the Maasai Group Ranches—areas like Indian Reservations where many Maasai communities lived—to be subdivided, so each individual would have to pay a fee to obtain a title for their land. This would have prevented many widows, who have little cash, from acquiring land. Boosted by the generosity of a WILK patron, we paid the fees for 65 women to acquire deeds to land.

Helping these women secure land was the first step to investing in their future. But owning land cannot solve the cashflow problem these women face. We needed a solution to help widows support themselves and their children now. This is how Hope for Widows was born.

The Hope for Widows Program

The Hope for Widows pilot program began in the summer of 2022 and was based on the LAB methodology, with several clear distinctions. In the LAB program, our team heads out to remote villages to teach livestock-keeping groups through interactive training sessions. We help these groups organize, petition to become a recognized group by the local government, and learn best-practice livestock management techniques. The LAB program works with groups, gives microloans to these groups, and helps groups establish working relationships and connections to other groups that remain after graduation. These groups work together for many years, long after LAB trainings have finished.

Hope for Widows follows the same teaching pedagogy as LAB, but differs in that it works with individuals. Training sessions involve elements of group education, but the goal is to teach individuals real-life skills that help their small business ventures. In the pilot program, 40 women throughout two regions—Amboseli and Kilimanjaro—gathered for eight of these training sessions. Of course, widows from different regions have different needs, so widows from Amboseli and Kilimanjaro regions met separately.

After these sessions, each widow received three goats—one male and two females—and a grant of $200. Goats are hardy and act as a long-term savings account. When kept healthy, they reproduce and mature, increasing savings exponentially. The grant was to jumpstart their small business ventures. This short-term cash infusion was important, as many widows were breaking even and unable to grow their ventures.

The focus on individuals has been a cornerstone of the Hope for Widows program, as each widow has specific needs. However, widows in each region have similar needs. To better understand how we sought to help these women, a profile for each group has been provided below.

The Amboseli Widows

One of our regional groups of widows live around Amboseli National Park, a region world-famous for its wildlife and natural beauty. Amboseli widows have two primary means of generating income: livestock and tourism. While livestock requires daily attention and maintenance, tourism is a seasonal business. These women are well versed in business, with most already a part of some livestock or tourism operation. But neither of these provide steady streams of cash needed to pay for daily needs.

During our training sessions, these women came together from the surrounding area, shared their experiences, and developed close relationships. Like the participants in the LAB program, these women organically formed a tight-knit group on their own. They decided that they would continue to work together outside of the trainings, as a group, pooling their resources and contributing to “merry-go-round” savings system, familiar to many around Amboseli. Essentially, each week every woman contributes a certain amount of cash. Every week the collected cash is given to one woman in the group, allowing her enough capital to pay for larger business expenses. Because the recipients rotate regularly, no one person risks a loss of income; everybody gets a periodic much-needed cash infusion.

The Amboseli women also raise vegetable gardens, which at first seems outside the scope of their livestock businesses. These “gardens” begin in kitchen sacks and prevent the women from having to purchase as much food as they normally would. The saved money is used towards expanding their businesses which, in turn, generates more profit. Kitchen gardens have, in a sense, diversified their portfolios.

By combining livestock income with vegetable production, the Amboseli women have created a working environment that supports them individually and collectively. They pair their education from the Hope for Widows program with what they already know about raising small livestock to build businesses that provide a steady stream of income.

The Kilimanjaro Highland Widows

The second Hope for Widows group comes from the highlands near Mount Kilimanjaro. These women have found unique ways to use their training to increase profits. Unlike the Amboseli group, the Kilimanjaro women don’t have tourism to rely on, so the focus has mainly been on crop farming.  HFW program provided additional training in agricultural best practices such as soil preparation, soil analysis, and seed selection for widows to improve their farming business. We’re going to look at two women who have developed their own ways to succeed in their food-selling business as a result of their training with the Hope for Widows team.

One woman has focused on buying, growing, and selling maize in her community. Maize is a staple crop used in various traditional meals every day. It makes sense, then, to buy and sell it to generate profits. Some days she sells up to 90kg of maize, which in turn gives her a chance to invest in more grain as well as save money for future expansion.

Another woman has used made enough money that she now can lend it and gain interest in return. This is profitable not just because it’s a method that historically has worked, but also because it requires no additional output of resources. That means she can both focus on her business as well as collect interest on borrowed funds.

The success of the Kilimanjaro widows shows that, with some guidance and their own fresh ideas, they can become self-sufficient and take charge of their lives. This trend is just a part of the bigger picture, though. With a little support, the widows in Kenya can develop specific ways to thrive.

Continuing with Hope for Widows

By providing more than just a cash handout, we’ve given the widows a set of tools they can use to stabilize their living situation and also afford the costs of caring for their children. Based on early results from the Hope for Widows program, we feel confident that we can help more women gain autonomy and business acumen. We hope to train more Maasai widows in Kenya so that they, too, can achieve economic stability so that they are better able to care for their families and themselves.

The post Bringing Hope: An Inside Look at Our Hope for Widows Pilot Program appeared first on Water is Life Kenya.