Archive for October 18th, 2007
Credit Access to Women Key to Breaking Cycle of Poverty
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN  |
| Mary Mwihaki selling chips in Mathare, Nairobi |
IRIN – Besides education, health and good infrastructure, access to credit ranks high among the priorities of millions of Kenyans living in informal settlements in urban and rural areas.
Even small amounts can be enough to break out of the poverty trap.
“I started this business of selling chips [French fries] two years ago using money we raised as a group of 30 women,” Mary Mwihaki, 27, a resident of Mathare, one of Kenya’s large slum areas in the capital Nairobi, told IRIN.
Every day, each of the women in Mwihaki’s group contributes Sh20 (30 US cents) and the resulting Sh600 ($9) is given to a different member of the group on a rotating basis. Mwihaki had to wait three months to raise the $27 she needed.
Groups such as Mwihaki’s, mostly comprising women, have sprung up across the country in the past few years, with a wide range of daily contributions. Even those engaged in formal employment are forming such credit unions, paying up to Sh10,000 per month.
As the world marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on 17 October, Mwihaki and thousands of other Kenyans belonging to self-help groups continue their efforts to cross the poverty line, hoping to have more access to credit facilities.
“The profit I make from this chips business is not enough to cater for its expansion and at the same time meet my family’s daily needs of food, water and clothing,” Mwihaki said. “In fact, getting sick is something no one in our family can afford; if you are sick, you swallow painkillers bought from the kiosk and hope for the best; we simply cannot afford hospitalisation.”
Sylvia Mudasia-Mwichuli, the Africa Communications Coordinator for the UN Millennium Campaign, said 46 percent of Kenyans survive on less than a dollar a day, which could be reversed as the country was rich in natural resources.
“Kenya has no excuse to have poor people,” she said. “Kenya posted 6 percent growth last year; it has enough resources and the government has good development plans, which if properly implemented, would see a drastic drop in the number of poor people.”
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN  |
| Marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty in Nairobi |
However, she said, Kenya was generally on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with only two goals still a source of concern: maternal mortality and environmental sustainability.
At the UN headquarters in Nairobi, staff joined people around the world in a campaign dubbed Stand UP Against Poverty, Speak Out. This year’s campaign aimed to set a Guinness World Record in the number of people involved worldwide after 23.5 million people took part in 2006.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Empowering Rural Women Sure Way to Combating Poverty
Studies Pay Off For Young Maasai Woman – How Simantoi Kilama Bought Her Family Shoes
With determination, hard work, and the right tools, Simantoi Kilama went from growing up hungry in Kenya to earning enough money to buy her family shoes and food. Listen to Simantoi tell her story and hear how far empowering women can go.
Like many women in poor countries, the women of the Maasai tribe in Eastern Kenya face barriers that keep them from lifting their families out of poverty. Many do not receive a single day of education, are not able to earn their own income, and are forced to marry and have children at ages as young as 12 or 13 – perpetuating a cycle that keeps entire families poor. But, as Simantoi Kilama shows us, giving women in poor countries economic opportunities can turn this cycle around.
Simantoi Kilama, a native Maasai woman who grew up without electricty or adequate food, is living proof that investing in women is the best way to end poverty. A recent nursing school graduate sponsored by the Maasai Girls Education Fund, a partner of the Women’s Edge Coalition, Simantoi is using income she earns as a nurse to end poverty for her loved ones – buying her family food, medical care, and essentials such as shoes to protect their feet while they work.
Listen to Simantoi’s inspiring story of hard work, hope, and economic empowerment in an interview conducted by Barbara Lee Shaw, Executive Director of the Maasai Girls Education Fund:
Innovative policies such as the GROWTH Act can spread opportunities to millions of other women like Simantoi, helping to remove many of the economic barriers they face, and empowering them to build better futures for themselves, their families, and their countries. Click here to sign the GROWTH Act petition.
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Simantoi in traditional Maasai clothing |
Simantoi working as a nurse |
Each month, Simantoi invests at least 15% of her income in her family’s future.
(Simantoi is on the far left and her mother is the second to the right)
Photo Credits: Barbara Lee Shaw
Click here to learn more about the Maasai Girls Education Fund’s work
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Is Eating Meat Worse For The Environment Than Driving?
Another ‘Inconvenient Truth’
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Director Deneral Carlos Seré responds to an August 2007 New York Times article about animal rights groups promoting vegetarianism as an answer to global warming
Claudia Deutsch reports in the New York Times (29 August 2007, and picked up in the International Herald Tribune), that animal rights groups are coalescing around a message that ‘eating meat is worse for the environment than driving’. They are urging people to curb greenhouse gases by becoming vegetarians. These groups are citing a study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that states that livestock business generates greenhouse gases. That’s true; methane and carbon dioxide produced by livestock contribute about 15% to global warming effects. But simply focusing on this contribution to global warming distorts the problem and, more importantly, fails to offer solutions. Research tells us it would make little difference to global warming if we somehow removed all the livestock in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. The impact on livelihoods there, however, would be catastrophic.
What the animal rights folks are not saying (and the FAO report does say) is that for some one billion people on earth who live in chronic hunger, in degrading poverty and in degraded environments, the lowly cow, sheep, goat, pig and chicken provide nutrition, income and major pathways out of poverty, just as they did, until this century, in rich countries. In poor countries today, more than 600 million rural poor people depend on livestock directly for their livelihoods and farm animals account for some 30 percent of agricultural gross domestic product, a figure FAO expects to rise to 40 percent in the next 20 years. Virtually every industrialized country at one stage built its economy significantly through livestock production and there is no indication that developing countries will be different. Do we want to deny one-third of humanity—the 2 billion people living on less than 2 dollars a day—what has been such a critical and ubiquitous element in the development of industrialized countries?
The animal rights groups argue that humanity could help stem global warming by switching to a plant-based diet because mass-production of animals can lead to environmental as well as health problems. But the livestock that eat grain in the United States eat grass in Africa. The beef that causes heart disease in Europe saves lives in Asia. And the manure that pollutes water in Utah restores soils in Africa. The world is big and full of difference between the have’s and have not’s. In one city, too much cholesterol is a daily fear; in another, too little. But for much of humanity, livestock farming, most of it involving one or two cows or a few goats and sheep or pigs and chickens raised on tiny plots of land or in urban backyards, reduces absolute poverty, malnutrition and disease and often actually helps to conserve natural resources.
Demand for livestock products is in any case skyrocketing in developing countries, making an increase in animal production in those countries inevitable and this argument academic. FAO and other groups are predicting that the impacts of this on-going ‘livestock revolution’ will change global agriculture, health, livelihoods, and the environment. We should be looking for ways not to stop this livestock revolution (which, being demand-led, is impossible) but rather to harness it for human as well as environmental welfare. And before setting ourselves the task of ridding the world of animal flesh, we might try ridding it instead of unspeakable poverty, hunger and disease. We need a balanced approach to solving complex environmental problems, one that does not hurt the many people who depend on livestock for food and livelihoods.
– ENDS –
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is a non-profit-making and non-governmental organization with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and a second principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ILRI works at the crossroads of livestock and poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity-building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable development. ILRI works in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, with offices in East and West Africa, South and Southeast Asia, China and Central America. (more)
For further information or media enquiries, please contact:
Dr Carlos Seré
Director General, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3000
OR
Margaret Macdonald-Levy
Web editor/writer, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Glasgow, UK
Email: m_macdonald-levy@lineone.net
OR
Susan MacMillan
Web writer and head of public awareness, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: s.macmillan@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3260
Kenya Environmental & Political News Weblog 