Invest in Her: Empowering Entrepreneurs in Kenya

A quick note before we start: this project was previously called Women Who Lead. We've renamed it Invest in Her to better signal where the program is heading. More on that at the end.

This quarter, Invest in Her continued doing what makes it work: women across our Community Health & Empowerment Clubs (CHECs) saved consistently, borrowed wisely, invested in income-generating tools, and reinvested profits to keep growing. The pattern holds village after village, with women pairing financial skills like table banking and small loans with steady leadership inside their groups.

Below is one snapshot from the field that captures the momentum donors like you are making possible.

Kanyipir: Savings → Seedlings → Steady Income

What changed: Milka, a 35-year-old mother of seven in Kanyipir Village, turned her tailoring income into something unexpected: a tree nursery in her dry community. Using her own savings, she began raising and selling seedlings, walking long distances to fetch water and keep them alive.

Why it matters: The nursery now earns enough to help Milka cover food and school fees for her family. In a community where water access is hard and rain is unreliable, she built a viable green business by sheer determination, one bucket of water at a time.

The ripple: Milka's progress is part of a larger pattern across Kanyipir. Other women in the CHEC are turning their merry-go-round savings into businesses of their own: liquid soap, second-hand clothing, household essentials. The savings group structure is doing exactly what it was designed to do, turning training into income and income into household stability.

By the numbers (this quarter):[Insert real figures from the Kenya team here: Kanyipir CHEC's most recent share-out total, interest earned, profit, member counts, or Milka's nursery output. Real numbers land harder than general descriptions, the way Jackline's 141,080 KSH did in the February report.]

What's next: Kanyipir is one of the four pilot villages for the next phase of Invest in Her. In the coming months, the program will fund women's groups inside Kanyipir to launch shared income projects, with $400 to $500 grants going directly to each group via M-Pesa. Project earnings will flow into the CHEC's own table bank, where the Executive Committee lends to members at the standard 10% rate. The goal is to multiply what Milka has built on her own, so the next generation of Kanyipir women has seed capital from day one.

A note on the project name

Women Who Lead is now Invest in Her. Same mission, sharper name that captures what your gift actually does. Updates from the field will continue exactly as before, and your contributions still go where they always have: directly into capital for women in CHECs.

Thank you: Your support has helped women like Milka turn training into income, savings into businesses, and determination into household stability. Thank you for walking with them.

Links:

• Our new Invest in Her program page