Invest in 10 women entrepreneurs in Northern Kenya

This report is being sent to 45 friends of Children Peace Initiative Kenya, who have donated $6,756 to help us strengthen collaboration between women leaders from the Samburu and Pokot tribes in Northwest Kenya. We are very grateful!

Under our project, ten women – five from the Samburu community and five from Pokot – have used the funds raised through GlobalGiving to develop collaborative ventures. The two groups of women already owned businesses. Our project has helped them to use these businesses to connect the two communities and build peace during a turbulent time.

These collaborative efforts between the Pokot and Samburu women have strengthened inter-dependency across the two neighboring communities, extending far beyond the ten women. The two tribal groups have been interacting during market days and cultural events and exchanging invitations for religious events.

Unfortunately, however, the overall security in the region is deteriorating. Over the last couple of months, parts of Baringo and Samburu counties have suffered incessant inter-ethnic attacks and killings. These have caused the government to impose security measures such as a dawn-to-dusk curfew and restricted movement. The government has also launched 24-hour long security operations to forcefully remove guns.

This has affected interactions between the Pokot and Samburu women entrepreneurs. However, Fatuma, one of the beneficiaries from the Samburu side, told our CPI team that the relationship between the two groups is strong and that they continue engaging actively with each other.

For example, the Samburu members continue to communicate regularly with the Pokot women and also participate with them in a type of savings club known as a “Merry-Go-Round.” Also, the Pokot women share information with the Samburu about potential raids.

One of the photos shows Margaret, a founding member of the women's network, outside her restaurant in the Samburu town of Longewan. On a busy market day, Margaret feeds over 100 Pokot customers who visit Longewan for the market.

Also, in spite of the tensions, Samburu and Pokot communities of Amaya still maintain a good relationship and have voluntarily returned stolen goats to their owners on two occasions.

In other words, business is helping to preserve the peace on both sides. Some businesses have even grown. Fatuma on the Samburu side enlarged her premises and increased her stock. Another member of the network has opened a new clothes shop. Another has opened a hotel.

Overall, however, the insecurity and fear has led to less movement between the villages and this has affected business. But Fatuma says they still engage in exchanges on a small scale despite the challenges. Recently the Pokots from Amaya requested seeds to plant maize and Fatuma was able to send 20 bags of seed from Longewan to Amaya. She also still buys her vegetables from Amaya and sells them to the Samburus in Longewan.

The other good news is that the corridor where the women entrepreneurs live on the Samburu and Baringo sides has remained peaceful. Community leaders say this is due to previous peace work in the area, including by CPI. CPI's network of businesswomen has also demystified the supposed “enemy” on the other side.

Chief Benjamin, who is the area chief in the village of Logorate, made a courtesy phone call to CPI Kenya to thank us for CPI’s previous initiative targeting women in business and the community at large. He said: “Although we are surrounded by very turbulent villages in both Samburu and Baringo side, our zone has remained peaceful courtesy of the women entrepreneurs and the cow camp event that brought together Samburu and Pokot warriors.”

At CPI Kenya we are glad that this important initiative targeting women has had such a great impact and continues to connect these two communities during such a turbulent time. It is our hope that the situation will eventually improve and that the women businesses will continue thriving.

Thank you again!

Monica and the CPI team in Kenya.

We recently reported on this project through our online news service. Apologies for cross-posting.

This report is being sent to 185 friends who have donated to our partner, Children Peace Initiative Kenya (CPIK), through GlobalGiving. We have launched seven appeals to support CPIK’s unique brand of peacebuilding in Northwest Kenya since 2017 and these have raised a combined $26,189. This is absolutely amazing and our two organizations are deeply grateful.

It is now time to report back on our latest appeal, which we launched this past summer. CPIK has used the money to help women and herders take practical measures against climate change. The early results are encouraging, as well as relevant to the current UN climate conference (COP 27) in Egypt.

We explain more in this report.

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Hilary and Monica founded CPIK in 2011 to build peace between herders in in Samburu County, a vast area with a population of around 310,000. Herders have fought over cattle for centuries in the region. Until recently this was fueled by a warrior culture, tribal animosity, and an urge to acquire more cows which are the main source of wealth in pastoralist communities.

But the balance – and the cause of conflict - has shifted in recent years. The main pressure now comes from drought, which is forcing herders to encroach on the land of other tribes in search of rainfall and pasture. Cows, conflict and climate change are now inextricably linked.

This became clear to Hilary and Monica during a trip to the North in 2021. They found village elders in a panic. Cows that once lived for 5 years were dying young. Mothers and wives of the herders were being forced further afield in search of water. Pasture was withering. Kitchen gardens were disappearing.

This was a new and drastic crisis and it called for a new solution.

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CPIK’s traditional response to tribal conflict has been to organize peace camps for children from opposing tribes. Once the children form friendships, CPIK arranges visits, known as “peace holidays.” This builds trust between families, village elders and eventually the herder/warriors, who are usually parents themselves.

Over the years, CPIK has also offered practical incentives to collaborate through Heifers for Peace, a project that gifts a cow to two families from opposing tribes on the condition that they rear the cow together. Four of our appeals on GlobalGiving have sought funds for Heifers for Peace.

After returning from the North in 2021, Hilary and Monica decided to draw on both strategies – working through children and building inter-dependency – and work with herders and women, two of the groups most threatened by the climate crisis.

They did this by launching two start-ups this past summer with help from Julia, our Peace Fellow. The first start-up takes the form of cow camps for Pokot and Samburu herders/warriors. CPIK organized a first camp on Samburu land in July and over 200 herders attended with their cows. They agreed to share water and land during times of drought and jointly exploit “no man’s land” – pasture that lies between the two tribes but is unused because of the fighting.

The second start-up was aimed at women. CPIK issued invitations to ten women who run small businesses in the villages of Longewon (on the Samburu side) and Amaya (Pokot). The women then met for a day in Amaya and formed the Women’s Entrepreneur Network (WEN) for pastoralist businesswomen (top photo).

Their first goal was to trade with each other and Josephine - a Samburu mother of seven who coordinates the Samburu group - showed them how it can be done. Josephine inspires others by her example. She  buys maize from Pokot women in Amaya, grinds the maize at her small mill in Longewon and sells it back to the Pokot women as maize meal when they come to Longewon for the market. She uses the mobile phone service M-Pesa to communicate with her Pokot customers (photo below).

CPIK hopes that as such trade expands, the network members will also start to share ideas and even produce. The start-up will provide the ten traders with seeds and soil for kitchen gardens.

Both start-ups are taking CPIK into new territory but they also draw on CPIK’s traditional strengths and network. Peace camps are particularly important. In May of this year CPIK organized its twentieth camp for children from the Ilchamus and Pokot tribes – a remarkable record.  Almost all participants in the two start-ups knew the other tribe after putting their children through a CPIK peace camp.

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The start-ups have laid a strong foundation for 2023. CPIK will now seek funding to take the start-ups to new communities in Samburu County and organize peace camps in neighboring Baringo County, which has been the scene of cattle raids and fighting for years.

This is an exciting outcome for AP after years of working alongside CPIK. We have deployed five Peace Fellows (graduate student volunteers) to Kenya since 2016. All have visited the north, attended peace camps, described their experience through blogs and photos, and raised significant money for the six fund-raising appeals. Much of the material for this report comes from the excellent blogs and photos of Julia, our 2022 Fellow who studies at George Washington University.

In closing, we want to thank you all for making this exciting program possible and showing how vulnerable communities can take practice steps to counter climate change, which can seem so overwhelming.

This appeal will remain active through Giving Tuesday (November 29) when GlobalGiving will offer matching funds for donations up to $2,500.

In gratitude

The CPIK and AP teams

Links:

• News bulletin about the launch of the two CPIK start-ups