Empowering women to start businesses and become wildlife champions

Around Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, Maasai women are at the forefront in interacting with nature as they provide for their families, but they are often marginalized when it comes to socioeconomic empowerment and leadership. Many families are experiencing a need to generate extra income, which puts increased pressure on nature and wildlife. So, together with the German foundation Margarete-Breuer Stiftung (MBS), IFAW is supporting 60 women in the Amboseli community to complete a three-year vocational training program. These women have learned professions like hairdressing, dressmaking, and catering.

Called Jenga Mama—Swahili for ‘Empower a Woman’—the programme aims to equip these women with the skills they need to set up their own microenterprises and generate sustainable incomes. Recently, they graduated from their year of education. They will go on to learn how to establish their businesses over the next 12 months and then complete the program with a year of mentorship.

By supporting these women to create an additional source of income, Jenga Mama is not only reducing the financial impact families face when wildlife destroys crops or livestock but also boosting the women’s confidence to participate in governance and decision-making. They will become a strong voice for finding solutions to the challenges they currently face—whether those challenges come from living alongside wildlife or changing restrictive gender roles.

Transcript

Daisy Ochiel: Jenga Mama has changed the role of women in our communities, creating a new balance. When women are educated, it changes attitudes about wildlife. The whole community improves its beliefs on how they protect wildlife. Now, you see wildlife as a resource, not as a threat. Because of this, wildlife is given Room to Roam.

With the support of your husbands, families, and community leaders, 60 of you had the opportunity to go back to school. This celebration is for you. To celebrate each other. To celebrate your families. But also for you to celebrate yourselves.

My name is Daisy Ochiel. I’m the female engagement officer for IFAW. I am so happy to see when women are not just boxed into believe that something is right—that where you are now is where you belong. To every woman, you belong anywhere you want to be. It’s time for us to create a better future for our families, for our communities, and for our country, Kenya.