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I have spent the past two days in KOP with Faith and James of the family empowerment program. I went around Kiandutu with Faith where we visited about 5 families per day, both new candidates for the program and ones who have been involved for a while. All of the empowered people I have visited so far have been women but there is talk about getting more men involved too.
With new candidates we always start by talking about their children, taking their names and if they are going to school or not. Then we talk (they speak mainly in Swahili so I mostly listen) about the different programs we have and how they might fit into it. This might be by attending seminars for parenting skills, saving money, becoming enrolled in the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), or various other things. We also discuss the possibility of opening up a business for them to help them earn money to sustain themselves while learning skills from the seminars.
While walking to another house I started thinking about goal setting and how it seems that when we enter a new client's house we typically share our goals for them. So the next house we entered we started by first asking them what their goals are for themselves and their family. I think by doing this simple thing they make the goals (which are usually aligned with ours for them) their own and will feel more compelled to reach them. It seems like it worked! One woman came up with something we didn't even think of. She wanted to start a business again but for selling smoked fish that she gets from a lake further away from Thika. How creative! Not many people do that and really, how many green grocers can Kiandutu effectively hold?
The next house we went to was a woman who had been in our program for a couple weeks. She started by selling boiled maize and beans but had expanded to selling quality milk too (not watered down as many people here do). She was SO excited and ran to her home to show us the log book she has been keeping that shows how much she earns and saves for each item. She has 700 shillings saved already which is about $9, and though that doesn't seem like a lot it goes a long way here.
Another woman we visited sells firewood that she takes from Del Monte's land. They have HUGE farms here, mostly pineapples from what I have seen. Taking this firewood is very risky because if they catch you they lock you up and charge you a large fine. It happened once to this particular woman and she was away from her children for days, while they didn't know where she was.
Also, as you can see from the picture, the food stand we set up last week is doing great and she is expanding her inventory!
After we returned everyone was filling out reports about the day and how their follow-ups went. It was a good day!
- comments
Katie I love hearing financial empowerment success stories! Good idea to let the families tell you their own goals. Is there an easy way to donate to KOP?