Livelihoods
Our economic empowerment projects include business skills training, seed funding for businesses, cooperative business projects, and expert support for business mentorship. In our micro-business training sessions we seek to provide the tools and skills for widows to start sustainable agriculture and business ventures that meet their basic needs, provide a surplus for their income, and facilitate their economic independence. We have trained over 120 widows in micro-business techniques which has led to the creation of a “table banking” program which allows the women to pool their resources and borrow money from one another for micro-businesses. Nyanam has also began a “kitchen gardens” project which has improved food security, nutrition, and provided additional income for the widows and their families.
“My desire for all of us widows is to rise together, especially economically.”
Why economic initiatives?
Widows in Kisumu and globally face economical challenges as 4 in 10 of the 258 million widows in the world live in poverty and 1 in 10 live in extreme poverty. Globally, 70% of widows are the sole breadwinners in their families. Because of poverty, many widows are unable to adequately provide for their basic needs including access to healthcare. They are similarly unable to provide their children with secondary and tertiary education.
Micro-Business Initiatives
Business training is one of the core training programs that Nyanam offers to widows in partnership with Women in the Window International (WiW). Essential to lifting widowed women out of poverty is strengthening their ability to generate income. Nyanam conducts microbusiness training to help ensure that there is no hunger in the households of widows, and that widows’ children can access education and that the sting of poverty is reduced.
Kitchen Gardens
After recognizing the need for more sustainable agricultural options, we launched the kitchen gardens initiative which provided the widows with vegetable seeds to plant near their homes. The kitchen gardens have had a noticeable impact on the visibility of our widows outreach in their communities as well as the communities health. In learning the nutritional and medicinal values of foods, the widows' physical health has been improved.