Ordinary Touch Volunteers
Table Bankiing
The rural population are severely unbanked. Only 10% of the rural women population have access to formal banking or any form of credit. This is because these rural omen tend to lack the means on production. The land is held in their husbands' names and cannot to have collateral for formal credit. Their businesses tend to be purely susistence.
Ordinary Touch Voluntereers have a table banking programme where the women pull together their resources to provide small scale credit to each other The programme also provides means for saving for unforeseen emergencies. OTV organizes educational and business coaching workshops where the rural women are trained on the management of small businesses.
COVID-19 has devasted most of these businesses. OTV is working with these rural women to help restart their livelyhoods by patnering with well wishers and donors.
Domestic Violence
Violence is a daily reality for women and girls across Kenya. According to government data, 45 percent of women and girls aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence, and 14 percent have experienced sexual violence. Also 66 percent of married women have experienced domestic violence. Many cases are not reported to authorities and few women get justice or receive medical care.
Sexual and other forms of violence against women have devastating consequences including injuries and serious physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health problems, including sexually transmitted infections, HIV, and unplanned pregnancies.
Through empowerment, women are able to cater for their families' basic needs. This drastically reduces frustrations in their husbands, and makes them capable of confronting domestic violence.
A recent workshop on book keeping
While everyone is facing unprecedented challenges, women are bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of COVID-19.
Women who are poor and marginalized face an even higher risk of COVID-19 transmission and fatalities, loss of livelihood, and increased violence.
For the last 10 years, extreme poverty in Kakamega County, Kenya had been declining. Then came COVID-19, and with it, massive job losses, shrinking of economies and loss of livelihoods, particularly for women. Weakened social protection systems have left many of the poorest in society unprotected, with no safeguards to weather the storm.
In Kenya, small scale women farmers and Business women are the backbone of the economy. They are the ones who keep the families afloat. However, with massive lockdowns and shutdowns instituted by the governments in the attempt to control the spread of Covid-19, these businesses were severely affected.
Ms. Rose Okumu, who sells dry cereals at the local Ogalo market says that her business shrank by 70% since Covid-19 hit, and she is unable to provide the basic needs to her five children. Mrs. Zaituni Were, a used clothes trader, has since closed down her business due to lack of sales and has since used the capital to feed her four children.
Most of these women are either widowed, single or the sole bread winners in their families. Failure of their source of livelihoods will have longterm ramifications. Their children are likely to drop out of school, and hence further derail the efforts to eradicate poverty. These women are also subjected to domestic violence from their frustrated husbands.
Ordinary Touch Volunteers have decided to partner with well wishers to put these women back to work. We have conducted, and are still conducting numerous business management and sales trainings to these businesswomen to equip them with the necessary tools to make prudent business decisions.
With the vaccination program being rolled out in the country, and with these management skills, these women feel they are ready to get back to work. However, these women need funding to get back to their feet. Please partner with us and put these hardworking mothers back to work.so that they can take care of their families.