Supporting UNITED KENYA RISING IN KAKAMEGA, KENYA

JULY 2022 NEWSLETTER

Families earn more income, short videos, high school grads' next step, sponsor letters, food inflation, demo farm, and Kenya's elections. 

With training, encouragement, and a bit of funding from UKR, 87% of UKR families have started or expanded a small business in the last two years. 70% of these small business owners report their business ventures as still operating, profitable, and worth continuing. 

Our Family Care program is built on five pillars or “guiding stars:”education, agriculture, health, livelihoods, and basic needs (living conditions). One of the most exciting of these is livelihoods, e.g. helping families earn higher incomes. With UKR’s Family Care support towards livelihoods, we now have families engaging in a wide variety of businesses that range from tailoring, carpentry, and soap-making to shop-keeping, small eateries, and the ever-popular poultry production. 

The staff at UKR provide “micro-entrepreneurship” training to family guardians both individually and in small groups. They use a curriculum from Street Business School, an organization that has certified two UKR staff members as trainers-of-trainers. These UKR staff are now assisting others in the staff to implement this highly effective approach. The lessons teach concepts such as starting small, surveying the market, and building confidence.

Many of the families we serve have faced challenges running their businesses, from theft of poultry just before their sale to harassment by government officials collecting taxes from women selling vegetables on the roadside. Nonetheless, UKR families are impressing all of us by pressing forward and not giving up. 

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that many families are building wealth. A recent survey of our families showed that 43% have accumulated at least 10,000 Kenya Shillings (close to $100) in new assets from their small business income. A handful families have been very successful by achieving more than $500 in new assets through their businesses, and they’re grateful for UKR’s help while also agreeing that they’re ready to phase out of our support programs. Our vision is that all the families we serve can be this successful.

In August last year we launched a Rotary-supported agricultural business training initiative called “Strong and Healthy Families.” The first cohort of 62 UKR family guardians will finish up in the coming months, and a new group of 60 guardians will then engage in the same one-year program. 

The two-year effort is part of a Rotary “Global Grant.” The initiative is guiding families to try new farming methods and projects through exposure, field trips, and intensive business and farm-production training. Seven full-time agriculture interns are working with a dozen village-based groups of UKR guardians. The families currently participating are wrapping up their initial lessons, and many are already launching various new agricultural enterprises. They will each be supported with $150 in start-up capital, several more months of intensive on-farm support, and introductions to microfinance institutions that may help their farm businesses grow. 

We are pleased to share a video about the program. You can view the 5-minute video by clicking here.  If you’re interested in learning even more, there’s also a fifteen-minute version you can watch by clicking here. 

We remind our sponsors that they are always welcome to write a letter to the students and families they are supporting. 

We are no longer doing a single annual letter exchange. Instead, sponsors who are interested in exchanging letters can do so at any time, while those who are not interested do not need to write. Similarly, we will forward letters to sponsors whenever we get them from sponsored students and families. 

As a sponsor, you can send a letter at any time by emailing it to: [email protected]. You can type the letter within your email, or you can attach it to the email. 

Please be patient for a reply. Your letter will reach its recipient through UKR staff during their regular family visits and meetings with students. In some cases this can take a while, particularly with students at boarding schools.

Sponsors are also welcome to reply to this email with questions about their sponsorship or its status.

In April of this year, we cheered as 39 UKR students graduated from high school. Impressively, one-third of them (nearly twice the national average) received admission to universities with a partial government scholarship.  The others are now exploring various vocational training options.

Last week, UKR held two workshops for these high school grads. Each student reported on what they’ve been doing since graduation, and each was also asked to expound on their various career ambitions. 

The first student to join university has already headed off to campus, and the other dozen have their admission letters and are planning to join their institutions of higher learning toward the end of August. A bachelor’s in education is the most popular degree, with nearly half the young scholars hoping to become teachers. They are motivated by a passion for education and a belief that it’s relatively easy for teachers to secure employment in Kenya’s challenging economy. Other students have chosen to pursue bachelor degrees in computer science, economics, public administration, hospitality management, and public health. 

Meanwhile, the students who are not joining universities are all welcome to undertake vocational training courses that range from 6 months to 2 years, and we will support them as they gain these career skills. We will provide fees and supplies for vocational training, while students and their families are tasked with figuring out accommodation, transport, food, and other daily needs.  Most students in our vocational program find a training center near their home or a relative’s home, so that they have meals and a place to stay that is within their means. 

Join us in congratulating the recent high school grads and feeling proud of them.

Since the start of 2022 the cost of food in Kenya has skyrocketed. The prices of most staple foods have increased by roughly 50% in the last few months alone. 

Life in Kenya has become much harder this year. The cost of maize flour in Kenya has nearly doubled, and other food staples such as cooking oil, bread, and beans have increased by up to 50%. Other daily necessities such as public transportation, soap, and cooking gas have also increased dramatically.  The cost of fertilizer doubled as people were planting their farms in March and April. Inflation has also occurred in the education sector, affecting the cost of uniforms, educational supplies, and school fees.  

The most significant reasons for extreme inflation in Kenya are the rising cost of oil, the crashing Kenyan shilling, and a biting drought that has reduced food production across East Africa. There are also direct effects from the war in Ukraine because Kenya does not allow GMO foods and has historically imported much of its non-GMO grain (especially wheat) from two countries: Russia and Ukraine. These supplies are no longer easily available. 

United Kenya Rising (UKR) is helping families to grow more food through education about diversification and how to increase yields, lessons on producing free organic compost, and stop-gap assistance to the neediest families so they can buy fertilizer to ensure food security. UKR also continues to fund students’ education and to assist families in improving their living conditions despite rising costs.

We are sharing this update as information, but we also welcome any additional financial assistance from our supporters who may be concerned about this growing challenge. 

The Government of Kenya has joined the global movement towards preventing family separation and encouraging family reintegration. The work we support is being highlighted by officials from Nairobi as a role model to be emulated nationwide. They recently commissioned a video about it.

Our pivot to supporting entire families is part of a larger global movement to eliminate orphanages. 

The 13-minute video linked below was produced for the Kenyan government to promote Care Reform. It does not often mention UKR by name, but the majority of footage is from Kakamega and features students and families supported by UKR. 

In the video, UKR-sponsored students and parents speak of how important our Family Care program has been in keeping their families together and helping them to thrive. UKR’s leader Nelson Ida is also featured, emphasizing traditional family-driven African values in the provision of care for vulnerable children.  

To watch this video please click here.

The UKR demonstration farm in Kakamega Town is showcasing novel methods to overcome soil disease. At the same time, the farm is yielding papayas from fast-maturing trees planted last year, and showing off a variety of new crops that UKR farmers might wish to grow. 

In Kakamega, tomatoes are a staple food eaten by most families every day, but the price of buying them has risen dramatically this year. Local farmers rarely grow tomatoes for sale because of a pervasive soil fungus in the region called verticillium wilt. Because of this disease, most people in Kakamega buy tomatoes that are trucked in from Uganda and distant regions of Kenya. 

To address this, UKR is showing off a soil sterilization technique whereby a locally-built device can sterilize soil using steam, which eliminates harmful soil fungus and makes it possible to grow tomatoes in soil bags or old sacks.

The demo farm is also showing off crops like cabbages, spring onions, garlic, and ginger which have a lot of demand in the local market but are usually sourced from very far away.

Guardians from families we serve will continue visiting the demo farm to learn about all that’s going on. Meanwhile, a new round of more than a thousand avocado and papaya seedlings is being grown at the farm for future distribution to UKR families.  

Please join us in hoping and praying for a free, fair, and peaceful election on August 9th. 

Kenyans will also be voting for a new President, Governors, Members of Parliament, and local representatives. 

We are not a political organization and we have no stance on who should win electoral seats. We only wish for a free, fair, and peaceful outcome that brings leadership who work diligently to build a better Kenya.

We ask you to join us in keeping the future of Kenya in your heart and your mind as the country approaches this big day.

Click here to scroll through the best photos from April ​

Click here to scroll through the best photos from May

www.friendsofkenyarising.org