BUSINESS SET-UPS

Giving A Hand Up, Not A Hand Out

From Nairobi (where, so far, we have had our base) to Awendo in South Nyanza, up to Western Kenya, down to Mombasa, the Coastal region and into Maasailand, Mama Biashara sets most vulnerable, abused and marginalised of Kenyan women up in small, manageable, sustainable businesses.

£20 per person will start a group business selling vegetables or charcoal, second hand clothes or making chappatis. We have started a business selling chicken heads with £5. One of our biggest successes has come with selling dairy cattle feed made from chicken poo. A business breeding rabbits gets a kick start by selling their urine as fertiliser. Strange but true. You learn a lot about where the good business is if you spend enough time on the ground.

A Mama B business for the mothers means children who are being raped by neighbours and family (child rape is endemic in Kenya) and young girls who are in danger of undergoing FGM and being sold into marriage as young as 10, escape this horror.

• Women who have been forced into commercial sex work can leave the streets.
• A woman who is being violently beaten by her husband can leave and be safe and secure,
• Girls kept as sex slaves can escape to a decent, independant life.
• And they do.

Business is money and money is power.

Having power is a totally new experience for these women. The businesses grow exponentially because a businesswoman never returns her grant to Mama B.
Rather, the commitment is that, once a business is strong enough, it takes in someone else in need and brings them up the way Mama B brought them up. And, unlikely as it may seem in this world, that is exactly what happens. We call it The Pebble in the Pool effect.

And our pool is widening and deepening every minute.