Field Report and Photos by Purity Milgo, Elephants and Bees Project Field Assistant 

You would think that, in today’s global economy, the majority of people residing in more economically developed countries such as Europe and North America would be financially literate. This is not the case. In fact, studies show that many of the residents in those countries would have preferred to start their finance education in primary or secondary school instead of ‘figuring things out on their own’ later on. If this is the case with more economically developed countries, imagine the level of financial literacy of people living in middle and low income developing countries! This is why it is important, now more than ever, to offer free financial literacy training to people who need it most. To people who do not have access to, or have never had any form of financial education, whose only goal is to improve their lives and the lives of people around them, these people will continue to be the most affected as the global economy continues evolving. We are particularly passionate about supporting underprivileged women living on the front line of human-elephant conflict in Kenya where they face dual challenges from both crop-raiding and the impact of a changing climate on agricultural outputs.An excellent example of such a group is the Mlambeni Basket Weavers Mwakoma Group here in Sagalla. This group is made up of 40 inspiring women whose vision is to improve their community’s standard of living. The Elephants and Bees Project (E&B) has been helping this group of women throughout the evolution of economic empowerment and several of the ladies already have installed our beehive fences to protect their farms from elephant invasions. Our support included constructing a Women’s Enterprise Centre (WEC) for the group in early 2020 with funding support from our friends at The Wild Lives Foundation. The fabulous WEC center serves as a dedicated safe space where the women can conduct all their income generating and entrepreneurial activities to spread their income generating options away from pure farming. The center also serves as a meeting place where these ambitious women can host workshops and training events that help improve their skills and access to health resources.

The Mlambeni Basket Weaver’s group in front of their new Women’s Enterprise Center.

The first major training event held at the WEC was a Financial Management training course that lasted a week. The training was conducted by SOKO Community Trust, a Kenyan-lead organization that strives to improve the social, environmental and economic skills of local communities, by providing people with the skills to improve the quality of their lives and lift them out of poverty. The key area the trust focused on was financially training the women in order ‘to enable them to start different eco-enterprises that would empower them and increase their household income’. The training aimed at achieving this by providing the women with the skill set needed to reduce financial pressure, sustain them through a variety of income generating activities and enable them to become self-reliant.The training was held from the 28th September to the 1st October 2020, a total of 5 days. The topics covered daily included earning (pato), spending (matumizi), borrowing (mkopo), saving (akiba) and investment (kuwekeza), spread across the five days respectively. Due to restrictions put in place by the government as a precautionary step to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the women were split into two groups despite not having any reported cases of Covid-19 within the Sagalla area. One group was taught at the Women Enterprise Centre and the other at the Elephants and Bees Research Center community hall. The two groups were both given the same teachings by five trainers (walimu) including Victoria, Dorcas and Evelyn at the E&B Research Center community hall and Patricia and Tipis at the WEC hall.