Fueling a Ripple Effect: Empowering Kenyan Women

INTRODUCTION This Empowerment workshop was conducted to disenfranchised women of Migori on the 19th February, 2018 t0 22nd February, 2018 for a period of four days. The training session had been difficult to put up, conserving the varied personal schedules of the prospective participants but when we got the best time for all, it became very successful. Many women came to this workshop having no vision in life at all. Others came with visions but had no means of achieving or reaching their visions. This training was an eye opener to them because those who had no visions came out having known how to craft a compelling vision and they left with visions to work towards. Those who had visions and no means left the workshop knowing what to do to get to their life dreams. 2.0 TARGET GROUP This training focused on the disenfranchised women drawn from Wuoth Ogik and Saa Yote villages in Suna West Sub County. 3.0 TRAINING OBJECTIVES These were three-fold: To examine the peculiar reasons for the women's disenfranchisement; To help the women become self-aware and be able to develop compelling life dreams and be committed to achieving them. To take the said women through the empowerment training model with the aim of helping the overcome their growing edges. 4.0 THE PROCESS This entailed taking the participants over the seven life areas as prescribed by the empowerment methodology. The entire model was packaged as follows: Day 1: Personal Growth Foundation Day 2: Personal power, Emotions and Relationships Day 3: Sexuality and the Body Day 4: Money, work and Spirituality 5.0 CHALLENGES These are women who come from one community and so opening up was not easy as some of them feared their issues would be out if they shared. It was not easy to bring these women to start sharing their experiences openly. The training was done during dry season where water was hard to get. We had to stop training early enough, at 3.00 pm, to enable the women go fetch for water for family use. 6.0 ACHIEVEMENTS We managed to bring these women to appoint of sharing openly and we had very good interactive sessions with them. The women were able to do self-assessment and acquired self-awareness. Each of them developed vision in different areas of life. The women who had visions in life got to know how to work towards achieving their dreams. They got the tools needed to achieve the dreams. We are looking forward to great results from this team. 7.0 CONCLUSION The training was successful because it met the objectives that had been set. 8.0 RECOMMENDATIONS The participants need to be followed up in order to assess their respective growths over time. Some of the women may need a repeat of the same workshop to be able to really internalize this concept of growth. These are achieved through the follow-up. Peer support and consultation is highly encouraged in order to sustain the application of the knowledge imparted and the skills given. The table banking activity introduced in the group could provide the motivation for the support group to keep meeting as we aspire to achieve optimum personal growth.