How long do members’ jobs last in Kenya?
04 Jul 2019
When your local economy hands you lemons, sell them at a profit.
By teaching our members the skills they need to run their own micro-enterprises, Hand in Hand necessarily puts sustainability at the core of our work. What good is a livelihood if it doesn’t long outlast our support?
Recently, we returned to one of our projects in Kenya nine months after it concluded to check up on our members. Were they still saving? Were their enterprises still going strong? Here’s what we found.
- 100 percent of Self-Help Groups were still meeting regularly
- 92 percent of members were still saving (86 percent regularly)
- 80 percent of enterprises were still operational – and expecting to grow. (Identical to the new business survival rate in the US, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- 87 percent of jobs still existed
- Members had increased their incomes, on average, by more than 100 percent
All in all, then, some deeply encouraging results. To read the full sustainability report, click here. And for more information about our work in Kenya, visit our Kenya page.
