For the last two days, GROOTS Kenya has met with the community coaches working in the project ‘Accelerating Rural Women’s Access to Agricultural Markets and Trade’ in Nairobi to discuss the coaches tasks in the remaining two months of the project.

The national coaches meeting whose main objective was to finese the coaches action plans for the remaining two months of the project was attended by 26 coaches, 15 from Nakuru and 11 from Kitui County.

The coaches trainings are mostly targeted at weak individuals and groups, whose uptake of skills and practices and overall growth has been slower than that of the other beneficiaries.

The success of the coaches will be determined by the number of women farmers whose production will have improved by the end of their coaching.

The coaches will have a busy two months ahead as they seek to ensure that their target farmers reach the expected levels of production so that they are at par with the rest of the project beneficiaries.

During the plenary session, the women worked in groups to discuss the underlying issues, the areas on which they needed additional training and the opportunities existing that could be exploited to boost the group savings.

The coaches also carried out elections to determine who will represent the groups at the World Bank. Ruth Kavinya and Wairimu Kanyiri were elected to represent Kitui and Nakuru counties respectively.

The coaches are to select a group of 50 group members from every sub county whose lives have changed substantially since they joined the project.

GROOTS Kenya trained a number of women farmers in best farming practices so that the women farmers would then be engaged by the organisation to continually transfer the skills and knowledge to their fellow beneficiaries.

A total of 235 community coaches in the project were trained: 59 in Organizing, 60 in Agribusiness, 41 in Dairy, 25 in Poultry and 50 in Horticulture.

More than 200 trainings were carried out at group level resulting in uptake of new farming technologies & practices among the women farmers.

The uptake of new farming technologies and skills imparted unto the women farmers by their coaches has seen a significant amount of increase in production from all three value chains of horticulture, dairy and poultry which can be attributed to the one on one training being done by the coaches.

The project which is being implemented among 3,500 beneficiaries in Molo, Kuresoi North and South Sub Counties of Nakuru County and in Kitui West, Central and Rural Sub Counties of Kitui County is funded by the Japan Government through its Japan Social Development Fund(JSDF) and the funds administered through the World Bank.