Initiatives
The Women Like Us Center in Nakuru, Kenya has come a long way from moving between donated campuses to the current facility, developed and sustained for four years. Following are our ongoing projects at the center, with active participation on each. These projects include counseling, sewing, farming, poultry projects and microenterprise and business education.
Women Like Us Achieve
If she can learn, she can earn.
Education is a core value that the foundation has been pursuing, especially in the non-traditional/non-academic areas of knowledge building and sharing.
Training projects at the center focus on a wider understanding of personal well being and the means of seeking support. It helps women identify their physical and emotional issues, heal themselves, and take this information forward into the community thereby helping and serving many others.
Mentoring projects at the center cover various topics:
- Individual and/or group therapy to help heal from physical and emotional trauma
- Family well being, safety, emotional support
- Healthcare and sanitation awareness
- Resources for care of FGM and other physical abuse issues
- Educational workshops for skill building and economic stability
- Earning opportunites via education
- Parenting and childcare workshops
Proactive awareness of these resources also helps reduce the occurrence of such misdemeanors. Success of this initiative is demonstrated by the fact that:
- Sometimes women come to be at the center, only to sit and be with themselves. Refresh, recharge, and go back to their responsibilities
- Even men from their households are now beginning to seek help through therapy
- The participant women are bringing in other friends, cousins, family members to benefit from the program
Computer Education
Our new computer lab is up and running with 3 sessions per day. The teaching is all about basic computing skills for our women that will lead to employment opportunities. Starting with how to use the keyboard, our women are getting complete instruction thanks to Michael, a secondary school computer science teacher who has joined our team.
Our women are thrilled to be in these classes and many have never touched a computer. Our research through local businesses helps us realize the exact skills our students need to qualify for a job.
A certificate of learning after 3 months is proof they’re ready to take on a job. And a brighter future is on the horizon.
Counseling
Women Like Us Center provides individual and group counseling that offers opportunities for women to reach their full potential and the skills and confidence to make healthy choices, successfully navigating poverty and illiteracy.
While the focus of Women Like Us Center is to empower women and girls for self sustainability, we believe that the most effective way to do this is by addressing root causes which hinder self empowerment and self independents.
Because of this we address many issues such as suicide, depression, domestic violence and abuse. Together, these efforts ultimately reducing overall dependency, poverty and drug and alcohol use.
Sewing
For a better tomorrow
Women of the Nakuru community in Kenya are actively being trained to sew, driving economic empowerment. The program has been an instant success within the community.
Participating women are willing to take turns at the machines in the same time slot/training slot if enough are not available. They initially started with hand-sewing sanitary kits, followed by machine-sewn kits, and are now learning patterns and sewing garments. The center currently has 15 manual sewing machines and we need 10 more. Fabric is very expensive in Kenya.
Thanks to our donors, we have been actively carrying fabric physically with our humanitarian travel program and are also make shipments during other times in the year. The participants of the sewing program are trying out new design styles, while also developing creative expression for themselves.
Program Metrics
Getting trained on a vocational skill is helping the women:
- Gain a means of earning and financial support
- Provide a creative healing process to their trauma
- Earn self respect from family as they contribute to the household income
- Create an impact beyond just the participant, as she takes this skill back to her own teenage daughter, a cousin, or an in-law and helps them find another step to success
Farming
Participants at the Center learn healthy farming techniques and evolve their processes towards higher efficiency. They have a plot of land to cultivate crops and sell the produce at the nearby market. This helps them bring in additional income into the family.
The next step in this project is to introduce other options of beans, leafy vegetables, root vegetables, and fruits that can:
- Co-exist with current farm and/or
- Be used in rotation with the seasons.
This will be aided with teaching them the nutritional value of the enriched diet and the benefits crop cycling in terms of farming techniques.
Poultry Projects
The Women Like Us Center enables and teaches women in the impoverished areas of Nakuru to become empowered through poultry projects which including raising and selling chickens and eggs to the local restaurants and markets.
The women are learning how to create their own business through this project and management skills to make the projects ongoing. As in the farming, the process includes nurturing the chicks, bringing them to full potential for selling and continuing this system’s cycle.
Table Banking
Our women participate in the Table Banking program at the Women Like Us Center. With a small deposit to join, the women are able to borrow from the group funds that includes an interest percentage. This transaction requires a signed commitment for repayment and is used by our women at the center to support their individual businesses.
