Fueling a Ripple Effect: Empowering Kenyan Women

INTRODUCTION

The second Empowerment Workshop was also conducted when COVID-19 pandemic cases were still on and we had to observe strictly the mitigation rules. These were women who joined a group that we had previously trained and they requested to be taken through the workshop as well. These were young women and girls who are members of Bethel Women Group.

At the beginning of the workshop, only two participants had a rough idea of what they want in life. The others didn't know clearly what they wanted in life. Majority had no visions and even the two who had visions were unable to state clearly what really their visions were. They were very pathological and focused on their failures, impossibilities, and inabilities.They all started the workshop with clear expectations. They all wanted to learn on how to formulate compelling visions and to acquire the tools necessary to bring their visions to manifestation. After the workshop, their eyes openned and they left the workshops having crafted compelling visions in different areas of their lives. They became more self-aware because they had several chances during the workshop to self-reflect on who they really are. This became the foundation upon which their visions were built.They changed their focus and startedpaying more attention to their visions.The 4-day Empowerment Workshop they got exposed to enabled the eight young disenfranchised women exhibit great transformation in their lives. We are very grateful for our donors who gave generously to enable these women to have these experiences of great transformations. Thank you once again for funding our workshop!

What went well

• There were great transformations witnessed in this workshop. They left the workshop more self-aware than they came. They learnt on how to do self reflection and they also had time to practice this. They were interacting with their inner self consciously for the first time and this was great point of discovery to them.
• They got to look into their core beliefs and their sources of personal power to sustain their growth as they walk their journey of change.
• The women left the workshops with compelling visions that they developed during the 4-day workshop. They had a chance to learn and craft compelling visions for their lives-what they didn’t know before.
• The women had chance to assess their belief systems, identify the beliefs that limits them and transform the limiting beliefs they discovered. This was a great thing that they learned in the workshop and they discovered a lot of limiting beliefs that had hindered their growth.
• All the women left with powerful affirmations and Visualizations that they are working on.
• There were many growing edge facilitations that were done. Below are 2 examples;
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Mary

Awareness:“I am not good in saving money. I do spend upto the last coin and expose myself to a lot of risk which pushes me into borrowing funds to survive. I think my income is too low yet some of my friends who earn as much as I do are doing better than me. They have savings and do not borrow debts as much as I do. I do not like this situation and I desire to come out of it. I want to be debt free and have my own savings".

• Vision: To meet all my financial needs and and have a savings account.
• Transformation:

v  Limiting belief:Only those who earn a lot of money are able to have savings.

v  Turn around:Ability to save is an aspect of planning and not how much one earns.

• Growth:

v  Affirmation: I have a savings account as a result of good financial planning.

v  Visualization: I see myself sitting happily in my small room that has been re-arranged and looking beautiful. I am happily holding my moneybag in my hand. It is full and needs to be emptied to my bank account.

Grace:

• Awareness: “Ifind it difficult speaking my mind to my husband. He may hurt me but I will pretend that it is okey with me. I don’t know how he might take it and I may be rejected. So, I hurt within and I feel very bad about it. I really wish I would speak out but I am afraid.
• Vision: To be able to honestly speak out my feelings and hurts to my husband with courage.
• Transformation:

v  Limiting belief: Honestly expressing my hurts and feelings to my husband means I don’t respect him and I am applying to be rejected.

v  Turn Around: Honesty is a key to intimate relationship. When I am honest in sharing my true heart feelings to my husband, I am watering intimacy in our relationship.

• Growth:

v  Affirmation: I am intimate with my husband because I honestly share my feelings with him.

v  Visualization: I am holding my husband’s hands with my two hands and we are standing facing each other. I am looking right into his eyes and telling him how I feel about some issue and I can feel his eyes speaking it all to me that he is sorry and he is very grateful that I shared my honest feeling.

What needed Improvement

Some of the women had to go back home over lunch break to attend to their children. This meant that we always started the afternoon sessions before they arrived. Trying to wait for them made us lose 15 minutes in day one that made us go up to very late as we had to recover the lost minutes. We resolved this by duing recap every morning to enable them catch up with the rest.

Compensation for lost opportunity was an issue here. These women do small businesses which provides for their daily needs. Having them for 4 days consecutively is a great sacrifice. They requested not to be given lunch and instead be given the lunch allowance in cash to share with family when they go back home. We made a quick arrangement to let them have something at the end of every day.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the number of the participants. We had to limit the number to the capacity our venue would take with social distance put into consideration.