Grassroots Movement

Historically, grassroots women have been left out in all decision-making spaces. Development practitioners have seen them as recipients of projects and programs with no decision-making capacity. On the contrary, GROOTS Kenya believes that grassroots women are not passive recipients of aid but effective agents of change in all development spaces. GROOTS Kenya further believes that building a strong voice and agency for grassroots women brings us closer to changing the aforementioned perceptions and attitudes of how grassroots women are viewed at the county, national, regional, and international levels.
GROOTS Kenya looks at the grassroots women’s movement as foundational to its work—a critical vehicle in shifting the system of power to grassroots women and their communities. A strong voice and agency platform are the foundation through which women can yield other benefits.

Activities

Tana River

Community Resilience Building in Livelihood and Disaster Management (Rebuild) 1

GROOTS Kenya in partnership with CISP, Nature Kenya and Procarsur and in collaboration with NDMA is implementing a 3.5-year, European Union-funded project titled REBUILD―Community Resilience Building in Livelihood and Disaster Risk Management ―in Tana River County. The overall objective of the project is to contribute towards increased resilience of communities in ASAL areas of Kenya to drought and other effects of climate change. More specifically, the project seeks to enhance food and nutrition security of vulnerable households, especially for women and children, and generate sustainable livelihoods and protect productive assets in Tana River County.

Kitui, Laikipia

RWCC (Rural Women Cultivating Change)

GROOTS Kenya in June 2021 entered into an agreement with Seed Change through the funding of Global Affairs Canada to implement a 6 years “Rural Women Cultivating Change (RWCC)” project in Kenya. At the country level, GROOTS Kenya works in collaboration with Seed Savers and HIVOs. The project has three components;

Enhanced and more systematic engagement of and by young and adult rural women in public leadership and transformative decision-making processes including women’s and farmers’ rights and climate adaptation
Strengthened prevention of and response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) by individuals (f/m) and state/civil society actors
Enhanced engagement of young and adult women in climate-resilient food production systems and income generating activities.

GROOTS Kenya is implementing the project in Kitui and Laikipia Counties

Countrywide

Gender and Climate Change

GROOTS Kenya partnered with Diakonia, Christian Impact Mission (CIM), and the Anglican Development Services (ADS) in implementing a climate change project in Baringo County titled Gender and climate change. The project’s main objective is to build a socially and economically empowered rural women through climate change resilience in Baringo County, specifically in Tiaty Sub County. GROOTS Kenya is targeting an estimated 410 direct beneficiaries (70% women and female youth and 30% Men and male youth) mostly in Tiaty Sub-County. To achieve this, GROOTS Kenya's main activities include conducting gender audits to analyze the power relations in the households, holding dialogues on gender inequalities, offering psychosocial support to survivors of insecurity, developing climate change champions, and mapping and prioritizing climate change advocacy issues in the county in the first year of the implementation.

Kitui, Nakuru

Accelerating Rural Women’s Access to Agricultural Markets and Trade

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;

To organize women farmers to work collectively to economically empower and improve their livelihood,
To enhance women farmers’ lobbying and advocacy capacities for essential services and factors of productions
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.
To empower women to increase their access to microfinance facilities to improve agri-enterprise performance.
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.

Laikipia, Murang'a

Money power

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 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.

Kiambu, Nyandarua

Policy Dialogue

GROOTS Kenya has been part of the policy dialogue initiative since 2014. Over this period, GROOTS has been able to influence County governments in the dairy and potato sector at the national and county levels. GROOTS Kenya is implemented in Kiambu and Nyandarua Counties. During the third phase of policy dialogue, GROOTS Kenya proposed to strengthen the capacity of community advocacy teams in public budgeting to influence policies that would benefit the marginalized and influence gender-responsive public investments. This was implemented in Kiambu and Nyandarua counties. Moreover, through the increase in the capacity of grassroots women, GROOTS Kenya took part in the public participation exercise of the Kiambu County Climate Change Bill, 2021. GROOTS Kenya recently signed a one-year Memorandum of Understanding with Kiambu County partners to develop its County Energy Plan. Kiambu County Government has mobilized resources from the Sustainable Energy Technical Assistance Project (SETA) for the development and implementation of the county energy plan which will be managed by GROOTS Kenya. GROOTS Kenya will therefore be directly involved in planning and supporting the literature review, household surveys on energy demand, and development of the energy plan. As such, in this fourth phase (2023 – 2025), GROOTS Kenya intends to continue with policy engagement through our grassroots communities led by budget champions in Kiambu and Nyandarua County in supporting ongoing engagements the 2 counties. This approach seeks to consolidate the gains made since 2014 in the two counties. GROOTS Kenya will further engage in cross-learning activities and knowledge management activities that will ensure we have our learnings and impact stories highlighted.

Countrywide

Strengthening the SDGs

The project intends to address many global social, economic, and environmental issues. The 17 SDGs are meant to serve as a global call to action to eradicate poverty, safeguard the environment, and guarantee that everyone lives in peace and prosperity. In light of this, GROOTS Kenya identifies that the SDGs offer a framework for gauging progress that has been made towards particular objectives and goals and enables governments, organizations, and people to monitor their development through time. This makes it simpler to see where improvements are being made and where work still needs to be done. GROOTS Kenya’s main concentration for this project is on SDG 5 “Gender Equality.” To respond to the indicators under Gender Equality, GROOTS Kenya will require the engagement of everyone in the community, including women, men, and all stakeholders working on Gender Equality issues. This engagement will include; advocating for policies that promote gender equality, such as equal pay for equal work, the elimination of gender-based violence and discrimination, access to healthcare and education, raising awareness about the importance of gender equality and the impact of gender-based violence and discrimination through community outreach, education campaigns, and social media engagement, and engaging men as allies in the fight for gender equality. This can involve education and awareness-raising campaigns targeted at men, as well as providing support and resources to men who want to become advocates for gender equality. Donor: SDG KENYA FORUM Project Objectives; Outcome 1: Increase implementation and funding of policies that advance women's economic empowerment and make it a priority at the national level Outcome 2: Strengthen the ability of governments and CSOs to deliver on gender equality policy priorities Outcome 3: Strengthen the Forum as an Accountability Platform for CSOs' Collective Advocacy and Impact on SDGs Outcome 4: Improved Data generation (Including SDG5 data) and capacity to use

Murang'a, Kirinyaga, Vihiga, Kisii, Narok

Innovation Horticulture Lab (IHL)

This MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING officially signed on the 17th day of January 2022 outlines academic partnerships, research and innovation partnerships, policy advocacy, community outreach partnerships and utility partnerships as the five general areas of cooperation between GROOTS Kenya Association and Kenyatta University. While this are general area, the two entities following an inception meeting held on 12th January 2022 agreed to articulate specific actions to operationalize the MOU. These specific actions will form the basis of the initial engagement and will be reviewed annually.

Murang'a, Nyandarua

Rural Women Economic Empowerment Project (REEP)

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

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