Uwezo Fund Empowers Women Groups in Kericho

The Uwezo Fund, a flagship initiative for Vision 2030, has continued to have a positive impact on registered groups in constituencies within Kericho County, with the majority of the groups involved in agribusiness projects.

Through this flagship program, women, youth, and people with disabilities can access funds to promote their businesses and enterprises at the constituency level.

Gladys Kippngok, manager of the Kericho East Sub-County Uwezo fund, claims that since 2015, 135 groups of women, youth, and people with disabilities have greatly improved because of the Uwezo fund.

The fund has improved economic growth and advanced the Sustainable Development Goals of reducing extreme poverty, and hunger, fostering gender equality, and empowering women, Kipngok was thrilled to report.

The Injerian Widows and Widowers group, located in Injerian village, Kapsaos Division, on the outskirts of Kericho town, is a witness to the Uwezo Fund’s potential to impact lives.

After they were approved for their Sh100,000 loan, the group’s business aspiration was given a boost.

The group, which consists of seventeen women and one guy, started as a table banking club in 2017 before deciding to register and submit an application for the Uwezo fund.

The cash allowed the Injerian Widows and Widowers organization to purchase three tents, chairs, and culinary utensils for hire to clients having events in the hamlet, according to Jane Kerich, group chair, in an interview with KNA.

“Uwezo fund boosted our savings and enabled us to buy all this equipment for events which earn the group at least Sh50, 000 per month,” added Kerich.

According to Kerich, the group now intends to purchase a vehicle that will allow them to conduct business activities with ease and use it for hire by clients to transport agricultural products.

“We have employed strategies that will enable us to acquire more funding to buy a car which will increase our income as a group,” Kerich remarked.

Another registered mixed-gender group, Kipkelion East Sub-County, described how Uwezo Fund helped the group’s endeavor to grow bananas in Binyiny village in the Tendwet area.

Evelyne Chebochok, the secretary of the Emitiot Binyiny Self Help Group, was overjoyed to announce that the group had finished repaying their first loan from the Uwezo Fund and was eager to seek for further funding to support their farming endeavors.

“We also benefitted from training on farming practices from the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP) that enabled us to start banana farming and currently we have over 100 banana plantations as a group while each member has at least 20 plantations of the same,” said Chebochok.

Although the majority of its members had little to no knowledge of managing personal funds, record keeping, taxation, and group dynamics, the organization encouraged the government to enable additional training on business and financial management.

“We also as a merry-go-round group which has been beneficial to us for years but not very profitable and so we would also want to be trained on how to start and run a table banking group, which we believe is more profitable,” added Chebochok.

A group must be registered with the appropriate government agency and have a current group registration certificate in order to be eligible, according to the Kericho East Sub-County Uwezo fund manager, who urged more registered women’s and youth groups to apply for the funding.

According to Kipngok, whereas women’s groups must have at least 70% women and 100% women in leadership, youth groups must have 70% members who are between the ages of 18 and 35.

“The applicant group must apply for the loan from the constituency, be appraised and recommended for funding by the respective constituency,” mentioned Chepngok.

As stated in a statement from the Uwezo Fund, since its inception, the Fund has distributed more than Sh 7.2 billion and directly assisted 1,124,221 beneficiaries, of which 69% are women and 31% are men.

This was done by offering affordable and accessible credit, building entrepreneurs’ skills, teaching the fundamentals of bookkeeping, and establishing connections in the market.