Economic Empowerment at Education for Life in Eldoret, Kenya

It has been a busy year for the Education for Life (EFL) project. In partnership with ‘Kuku Chick Company’, EFL recently conducted a three-day workshop on poultry keeping with 20 beneficiaries from 10 newly-formed Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) groups. The training targeted new members who had previously not attended a poultry training and had inadequate knowledge around poultry management. The content of the training introduced the participants to the locally-available chicken breeds, common poultry diseases and their treatments, types of vaccinations and their administration process and various proper record keeping relating to poultry farming. The participants realized the need to rear chicken as a business rather than as a traditional hobby of poultry keeping.

In addition to the poultry workshops, a financial literacy and basic business management skills training was held targeting 30 members from the newly-formed SILC groups. The training focused on the key aspects of business skills including the general understanding of business as a venture for income generation, business ethics, sources of business funds, financial capability, time management, customer relation and stages of wealth. The majority of the beneficiaries in attendance admitted that they had previously prioritised wants over needs, which had them with misplaced priorities in relation to the use of money; the training played a key role towards their shift of attitude around proper investment and use of money. The financial literacy training was a key eye-opener to the targeted beneficiaries towards setting their priorities through best practices for gainful small-scale business initiatives stemming from the loans from their SILC groups.

EFL empowers and provides opportunities for people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS to become self-reliant. EFL takes a holistic approach through psycho-social programming, health education and economic empowerment initiatives. We thank Misean Cara for funding this multi-annual project.