Economic Empowerment and Justice

The main objective of this project was to equip women with relevant knowledge and skills as well as enhance their leadership and organizational capabilities to enable them to become drivers of their own social and economic transformation in Nakuru and Kitui Counties with a focus on the dairy, horticulture & indigenous chicken value chain. The project planned to contribute to women farmers’ economic empowerment and improve livelihoods through improved agricultural production and access to markets. Partners: JSDF (Japan Social Development Fund) and World Bank Target Counties: Nakuru and Kitui   Project Activities The project was implemented using the value chain approach with a focus on dairy, indigenous poultry and horticulture. five main components;

1. To organize women farmers to work collectively to economically empower and improve their livelihood,
2. To enhance women farmers’ lobbying and advocacy capacities for essential services and factors of productions
3. To enhance women farmers’ business capacities and facilitate market linkages; where the project is implemented using a participatory community approach to strengthen the primary beneficiaries’ production and business skills to fully maximize their participation and benefits from agricultural markets.
4. To empower women to increase their access to microfinance facilities to improve agri-enterprise performance.
5. Project management, participatory monitoring and evaluation.

3,500 women organized in 131 registered and functional farmers groups along the value chains and 60 grassroots women trained as community advocacy champions to lead the lobby and advocacy along the value chains.   Project Achievements The project engaged with National and County stakeholders by the advocacy teams to provide essential services using project fact sheets which led to improved infrastructure (roads, health facilities, markets and schools). Other achievements attained through the project are;

• 110 grassroots women ascended to local decision-making & leadership positions through the project.
• 237 community resource persons (coaches) were trained to support ongoing capacity enhancement among farmers in production and agribusiness
• Enhanced uptake of technologies and proper farm management by women farmers
• Increased yields (milk 5-15 litres more per cow/day), increased poultry production (5 to 50 birds per farm)
• Successful collective marketing. 10 premium agribusinesses have been established.
• 80% of the women farmers hold savings in bank accounts. Self-mobilized group resources utilized in purchasing of materials for constructing farm management units and farm inputs
• Subsidized loans/funds worth $ 1,138,000 disbursed to individual farmers and farmer groups through the “Financing grassroots women concept”
• Web-based project, farmer-fed management information system operationalized to monitor progress at farm level
• 90 trained women farmers to monitor progress using a mobile application; 100 android tablets provided by the project to collect enterprise data.

Implemented in 2018, The Rural Women Economic Empowerment project aimed to socially and economically empower rural women farmers through agribusiness and rural development in Murang'a and Nyandarua Counties, with an overall objective of reducing poverty and injustice. When the project 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, one of the project outcomes, GROOTS Kenya trained 40 Trainer of Trainees TOTs from 19 groups in Murang’a and 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 a group savings and loaning process (GSL), also known as table banking. Here, each farmer saved at least 200 shillings per month and was able to provide loans to each other at an agreed interest over an agreed period of time. This further resulted in farmers taking up poultry farming for faster income to meet their short-term needs. GROOTS Kenya was also able to establish linkages between sub-county and ward-level agricultural extension officers for the farmer groups. As a result, the agricultural officers visited farmers in Murang’a, collected data on farming production, and developed and tested a banana curriculum. The training enhanced and increased farmers' resilience practices. Target Counties: Murang'a, Nyandarua Partner: We effect