OUR CURRENT PROJECTS

Mama Biashara has, to date, micro financed and supported around 300 small businesses for women, generally, ones with families to support. Just £25 will start a business selling vegetables or second hand clothes.  Even £5 has set up a chicken-head seller in Mathare (they make a delicious meal if you know how to cook them!) and she is still going strong.  Having their own business transforms the lives of these women – it makes them independent, able to feed and house their families. And, more than that, the psychological and emotional lift it gives them is as good as medicine!

Awendo Project

Awendo is in South Nyanza. All that is there is sugar cane, poverty, sickness and people resigned and inured to both of the latter.  So far Mama B has started several dozen small businesses, supported a brick making project, built a children's home and paid for a great deal of emergency medical care. We take supplies for the tiny local school, a load of food supplements, and we are starting a big new project there to produce and supply affordable sanitary towels across as many areas as possible. There is more information on this project under its own heading.

Sex Workers Projects

Over the past couple of years Mama Biashara has been working with commercial sex workers across Nairobi. Sex work is almost always a last resort - women with no education or training who have to leave home at about fourteen and support themselves frequently have no other real option.  Mama Biashara will set them up in another business allowing them to leave the streets and the bars where, often, they are robbed, assaulted and raped by their clients.

Julius and the Kabiria Group

Name: 
Jikomboe Upesa

Jikomboe Upesi is a group of discordant couples (where one partner is positive and one is negative) living in the Kabiria / Kawangware slums of Nairobi.   The group was formed by Julius Mukangala, an amazing and dedicated man who first contacted Mama Biashara in 2008, after his home and butchery business were destroyed in the post-election violence.   Despite frequent illness and struggles to keep his own family fed and clothed, Julius started this group and approached Mama B around a year ago.

SAMBURU

In the Porro district of Samburu the nearest school is too far away to reach. A small education programme exists there, set up by a local man.

MAMA BIASHARA JUJA

Name: 
Mamas : Faith and Lucy - Papas : John and Peter

Outside Nairobi Mama B has dug a well on a farm which has been dying due to lack of water. There are 4 generations of the same family living there. Water was found at 50’ and a pump installed. The well will provide water for the foreseeable future. Until now, the nearest water was several kilometres away.

By way of ‘interest’ on the well, the farmer will be supplying water to the local community. 

Once the farm is fertile again, the local community will be first in line for work.

KARIOBANGI

Name: 
Head Mama : Jedidah

In a slum on the other side of Nairobi, Mama B was doing workshops within the FUDAKA project (see below) with a group of sex workers. It became apparent that the priority for these women was finding a way to get out of the sex industry, while still being able to feed and house their children. After some time researching possibilities, we have begun Mama Biashara Kariobangi.

NGANDO

Name: 
Mama : Janet

Jaja Fish is both a fish business and the heart of Mama Biashara in Ngando – one of the slums in the Dagoiretti district. Janet Akoth and Janet Ogindo (hence JaJa) have been with Mama B since the very beginning. Both Janets are HIV+ and have worked tirelessly in their community supporting, educating, fighting stigma. Janet Ogindo has just discovered that her 11 year old son Michael is also positive.

WAITHAKE (through DECEIP)

Name: 
Mamas : Esther and Jane

A series of Business Workshops and MicroFinance Market Days has supported dozens of other small businesses and craftsmen, improving their marketing skills, augmenting their sales, introducing them to new customers and provided advice on any questions they have.

NGONG ROAD

Mama B has provided another small AIDS Charity (ALPHAO) with a popcorn making machine, giving them an income of 5,000ksh every week with which to help run their orphan support group.

D.E.C.E.I.P. (Dagoretti Early Child Intervention and Education Project)

Name: 
Mama : Felista

DECIEP – and more specifically Felista Kibe – is what has kept Mama Biashara in Kenya. This project has been rescuing, feeding, caring for and loving orphaned and abandoned children. It is the work of Felista Kibe, a woman, herself from the slums, who has made these children her life’s work. She has been doing this for over 10 years and I have been involved for 6.