KENYA: Entrepreneurship Project: Nuns Set to Create Social Impact on the Young Unemployed Women
Assumption Sisters of Eldoret
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
After following a six months program dubbed as Sisters Blended Value Project (SBVP) whose intent is to empower Religious women to begin projects for sustainability of their congregations and through their services to impact the society, a Kenya-based congregation of the Assumption Sisters of Eldoret (ASE) has commenced a project to support the young unemployed women in Western part of the country to find ways on how to sustain themselves.
“After the Association of Consecrated Women in Eastern and Central Africa (ACWECA) identified our congregation last year to join the SBVP program for awareness creation on how to be successful social entrepreneurs and self-reliant as a congregation, we began a poultry project which gave us good profit and this motivated us a lot,” Sr. Christine Imbali the team leader of the ASE Social Enterprise project told AMECEA online in an interview.
She adds, “We realized that the knowledge and skills we have gained should not only benefit the sisters but we can also use it to empower others who are indeed in the society.”
With this idea, Sr. Imbali who is the administrator for ASE Morning Star Rehabilitation Centre for Street Children together with some of her sisters, identified young unemployed women within the community to be the first beneficiaries from the knowledge they acquired.
“We carried out a community survey and identified a target group of 30 young women of 18-28 years who have no means of income for their livelihood to empower so as to bring about the social impact in the society,” Sr. Imbali narrated adding, “Our intention is to take them through a training on poultry farming and after a year we hope to have trained 60 of them.”
According to Sr. Imbali the 30 young adults have had two meetings on awareness creation and the Religious women who are training them are yet to assess their homes for the availability of space.
Asked how the unemployed young women will get initial funds to begin the project, Sr. Imbali said, “For the initial funds we intend to have them in groups and they will begin weekly savings of 50 Kshs (0.5 $) for five months and this is what they will use to buy the chicks for rearing.”
The congregation of the ASE have already budgeted to buy an incubator with capacity of 2,000 eggs so after empowering the women on how to rare chicken, they will have ready market and buy chicks from the Sisters and later sell to the Congregation again.
Meanwhile in Jinja, Uganda, members of the Little Sisters of St. Francis (LSSF) congregation after attending the SBVP training, began poultry rearing project, piggery farming and gardening.
According to the project leader Sr. Mary Florence Anaso in an interview with AMECEA online, the aim of the congregation is to help eradicate poverty within the congregation and the surrounding community and for sustainability purposes.
Sr. Mary Florence who is working in collaboration with Sr. Rose Thumitho the Project Coordinator and Sr. Mary Atema the Finance Manager for the social enterprise, disclosed that “the projects have been a source of hope to the vulnerable such as single mothers who are beneficiaries.”
They have appreciated the skills and knowledge gained from SBVP and encouraged congregations that have not yet identified projects to do so and make use of underutilized resources.
“We recommend to congregations to have positive mindset in entrepreneurship so as to uphold integral development, eradicate poverty and take care of the planet.”
