GROOTS Kenya in partnership with HORIZONT3000 is currently implementing a three year governance project entitled Money Power: Enhancing grassroots women, youth, marginalized and indigenous people’s voice and influence on public budget and fiscal policy at county level in Kenya” with funding from European Union which kicked off in January 2020.

The overall objective of the action is to contribute to building strong, effective and transparent public institutions at County levels through enhanced responsive, inclusive and participatory decision making as envisioned in the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and Sustainable Development Goal 16. The action is being implemented in 2 Counties namely Muranga and Laikipia

The project proposes to utilize a grassroots-led advocacy strategy, primarily driven by the solidarity movement which constitutes women, youth, marginalized and indigenous people groups. The project purposes to tap into policy makers from the departments of Finance and Economic Planning, County Departments of Gender, Youth and Social services, County Sectoral Departments of Water/Trade & Cooperatives/ Agriculture/ Health, Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) Budget Committee, County Budget and Economic Forums, Governors and Senators, amongst other stakeholders. These duty bearers will collaborate towards a more gendered public planning and budgeting with the solidarity movement. The solidarity movement consists 100 grassroots lobby groups specifically 50 Grassroots women groups, 30 Youth groups, 20 Marginalized and indigenous persons groups.

The action is expected to realize the following outcomes; Strengthened solidarity movement of women, youth, marginalized and indigenous people, enhanced knowledge of women, youth, marginalized and indigenous people in Public Finance Management (PFM) and in political advocacy, enhanced capacity of county government to deliver effective public participation and improve public expenditure management and strengthened networking with mainstream and social media and experiences capitalized and shared.

The Rural Women Economic Empowerment project seeks to socially and economically empower rural women farmers through agri-business and rural development in Muranga and Nyandarua Counties with an overall objective to contribute to reduce poverty and injustice.

When the projects started in 2018, it was noted that 68% of the mapped participants had low income levels (less than Kshs.5000 per month) and lived in mud walled houses. To ensure financial inclusion which is one of the project outcomes, GROOTS Kenya trained 40 TOTs from 19 groups in Murang’a 35 TOTs from 17 groups in Nyandarua on Group Savings and Loaning (GS&L).

As a result, the farmers shifted from a merry-go-round to group savings and loaning process (GSL)  also known as table banking, here each farmer saves at least 200 shillings per month to be able to provide loans to each other at an agreed interest over an agreed period of time.

This further resulted to farmers taking up poultry farming for faster income to meet their short-term needs.

GROOTS Kenya has established linkages between sub-county and ward level agricultural extension officers for the farmer groups. As a result, the agricultural officers visited farmers in Muranga and collected data on farming production, and developed and tested a banana curriculum. They are currently training farmers through demonstration plots with majority of the farmers slowly adapting to more resilient practices.

Partners - We -Effect

Beneficiaries-  Muranga and Nyandarua

In 2012 GROOTS Kenya developed the well documented Community-led Public Land Mapping model, with an aim of putting local communities at the forefront to safeguard the much threatened public land in Kenya. The model has since been piloted in 3 sub counties of Lari (Kiambu), Kigumo (Muranga), Kiharu(Muranga). The model involve targeted & sustained civic education to increase citizen pressure for successful land reform, a community led research on the level of awareness on legal and policy framework in the land sector, local community skills development on ICT, digital mapping of all public land in selected sub counties, development of a digital inventory of public land and maps, ongoing community led advocacy on proper & participatory management and utilization of all identified and documented public land by the state. This model has since been formerly adopted by Muranga County and piloted in two sub counties.

The National land Commission  & the World Bank has acknowledged it as an informatory model in the development of an inventory for Kenya. The model has been documented by GROOTS Kenya in the Taking action, community reference book, by university of Copenhagen & Denmark.

The project has since 2011 received support from SIDA!

Empowering grassroots women to use technology to secure and safeguard public land

Illegal and irregular allocation of public land to those with resources and those in power has denied communities living in poor settings access to  quality public services, like heath, education, water, sanitation, market spaces, among others.

Public land grabbing is one of the major forms of corruption perpetuated by those bestowed with administration and management authority and  unfortunately the public has remain powerless. Women living in poverty and in margins of development shoulder the highest burden when public land is not used to provide essential public services.

The Kenya National Land Policy 2009 and 2010 Constitution of Kenya acknowledge the lack of a comprehensive inventory of public land as a major bottleneck. They also reckon the need for a participatory approach led by the National Land Commission to create such an inventory.

As a proactive initiative, GROOTS Kenya decided to empower grassroots women to provide leadership in developing a model that would be used by the country to undertake a participatory inventory of public land. First and foremost, the initiative ensured that a critical mass of community members, predominantly grassroots women, understood the role land plays in development and the process and status of land reform in Kenya.
Importantly, the project supported women and community leaders to take stock and record all the public land in their areas of residence. A select group was then nominated to undergo a technical training on the GIS using GPS and tablets to record. Their role was then to visit each and every piece of public land mapped and take all the coordinates. The information was finally transferred using Arc GIS software to create a digital map of this record.

Through this initiative, communities realized their role to protect illegal and irregular allocation of public land. This is evi-dent from the actions they have taken since to safeguard public land. Moreover, government and land experts appreciate the role and capacity of women who in turn are invited and recognized as leaders in their own rights. Last but not least, planners and decision makers have used the developed map to plan and budget effectively for development initiatives.