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Category: Stories

Two new Trustees join the Hand in Hand International Board

Posted on by lballantyne@hihinternational.org

We are delighted to announce the appointment of two new Trustees to our Board, Felisters Gitau and Iris Epple-Righi.

Felisters is an innovative business leader in the FMCG sector with over a decade of experience driving multi-million dollar initiatives that enhanced revenue and market share. Currently, she is CEO of Farmers’ Choice, a leading producer of fresh and processed meats in Kenya for over 40 years.

Hand in Hand International Chairman, Bruce Grant said, “Felisters’ partnership-building skills combined with her pan African market insight will help steer our mission to increase revenue and build financial resilience among subsistence farmers across the continent.”

Iris is a highly experienced professional in the premium fashion and lifestyle industry with long standing management positions at high end department store Breuninger, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and as CEO at Escada till end of 2019. She now works on various supervisory boards.

Hand in Hand International Chairman, Bruce Grant said, “Iris is an outstanding addition to our board whose experience in creating long term growth at scale, combined with a passion for women’s leadership, closely relate to our own goals. She will help us to equip under-served women with the skills and resources to earn more money, ignite local economies and lift nations out of poverty.”

Meet Magadalene Radier – eco entrepreneur

Posted on by admin_handinhand

The world produces around 350 million tonnes of plastic waste each year, of which around 82 million tonnes is mismanaged or littered. This means it’s not stored in secure landfills, recycled or incinerated.

Mombassa’s population of 1.5 million people generates 900 tonnes of waste a day – a figure the city’s infrastructure simply can’t cope with. A lot of this waste works its way into the Mtopanga river, which was once a source of clean drinking water.

Magadalene Radier used to look at the plastic waste surrounding her home in one of the poorest areas outside Mombassa and despair. Life as a single mother of four was difficult enough without the added health hazard of mountains of rubbish.

Where there’s plastic to be cleared and recycled, there is money to be made.

Magdalene joined her local Hand in Hand savings group where she learned how to start and run a small business. By embracing circular economy practices and techniques, she could make money out of the rubbish. She’d always been good at making things – what if she collected, cleaned and repurposed the plastic? Perhaps she could create something others would want to buy?

Today Magdalene’s recycled plastic flowers and garlands are in demand for local weddings and her children’s toys are popular with children and parents alike. This creativity, combined with her Hand in Hand business know how, has enabled her to earn 40 per cent more.

Today she can pay her household bills, her grandson’s school fees and, at the same time, reinvest in the business. What’s more she now needs help in her expanding business so employs some of her neighbours to collect the plastic waste.

“In everything I do, I think about the future of my children and the world we leave behind. Every small step towards a cleaner environment and more stable economy is a step towards a brighter future for all of us,” she says.

Meet Damiana – Using digital skills to go from street vendor to hotel supplier

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Women often have less access to technology and the internet compared to boys and men. The gender digital divide in access to the internet remains the world’s largest in least developed countries and, at 32.9%, the gap is widest in Africa.

Did you know that while the Kenyan e-commerce sector is worth around $2bn, women are only half as likely as men to have access to the internet in Nairobi’s most deprived communities? Yet, if 600 million more women are connected to the internet in three years, this would translate to a rise in global GDP of between US$13 billion and US$18 billion

Online access brings business success

For someone like Damiana Musyoko, access to the internet meant the difference between a roadside stall selling fried fish with an income of US $160 a month and a commercial enterprise supplying hotel restaurants in Nairobi and sales of US $500 a month.

Bridging the digital divide

When Damania joined Hand in Hand’s Accelerator Programme, designed to equip successful micro-entrepreneurs to take their businesses to new heights, she was allocated a mentor and selected for additional training in digital marketing and sales. This included instruction on building her online product portfolio and setting up accounts on Facebook Marketplace and WhatsApp for Business. She also became a retailer on Jumia, Africa’s Amazon. Five months later, Damiana’s business was transformed.

“I have a Facebook account and I’m on TikTok. But it is the WhatsApp Business account that has made the difference. On WhatsApp I have 2,000 friends, so my posters get 200 views and many more shares. I deliver to hotels, clubs, church congregations. Hand in Hand, you have really made me grow!”

Damiana says.

Meet Mariam – changing the future for and her grandchildren

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Through Hand in Hand’s proven business creation model, developed over twenty years, we’ve equipped five million women start and run small businesses that stand the test of time.

Mariam Issa, in northern Tanzania, is one such entrepreneur. Like 70% of the women we work with, Mariam is a farmer – one of the millions of smallholder farmers producing one third of the world’s food. When she first joined Hand in Hand in 2022, she was struggling to harvest enough maize to put food on the table and earning just TZS 100,000 (US $37) a month from any harvest she could sell.

Hand in Hand’s business trainers taught her how to keep track of costs and income on the farm and how to calculate her profit. They introduced her to new agricultural techniques to equip her fight back against the degraded soil and unpredictable weather patterns and increase yields.

Four years on, Mariam has more than doubled her farm earnings to TZS 240,000 (US $90) a month. She’s using the extra money to pay the grandchildren’s school fees, clothes and food. She and her husband have even started to build a sturdy new home from mud bricks.

Looking back, Mariam says,

“The most important things I learned were the business skills and how to make the most of your farm. When I farmed maize I had just two harvests a year, now I plant so many different vegetables, I can harvest frequently.”

Meet Elishiwaria – on the fast track to business success

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There are millions of under-served women in Africa with the potential to expand their businesses, but who lack the credit, market connections and technical expertise to do so.

We equip women who already run enterprises to move up to the next level, raising themselves and their families well above the lower middle-income poverty line of $3.20 a day.

Women like Elishiwaria who, since joining our advanced business skills and leadership programme, earns five-fold to US $428 a month. She’s the proud owner of a children’s home and daycare centre where she employs three staff (a teacher and two childcare workers) to look after ten children.

Elishiwaria’s success did not come easily. The orphanage had been closed for some time, and Elishiwaria had to grapple with reams of government regulations and processes to get it up and running again.

“I never lost hope,” Elishwaria explains. “And now I can give hope to orphans and less privileged children, because we give them love, food, shelter and an education.”

Elishiwaria is passionate about education. When parents say they can’t afford to send their children to school, Elishiwaria will even pay for the children’s school fees and uniform.

Meet Pauline Mbugua – Succeeding in business through market connections

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In rural Kenya, women agri-entrepreneurs face barriers that men do not. They are often locked out of larger, more profitable value chains because they will typically produce in smaller volumes.

Until recently Pauline Mbugua, farmer and entrepreneur, was one of the many women whose only option was to sell her produce at a roadside stall, earning just enough to put food on the table. The vital market and business connections she needed to take her business to the next level looked set to pass her by.

From roadside stall to Kenya Nut Company supplier

Then she joined Hand in Hand’s accelerator programme and learned how to run a successful business and how to make business connections using WhatsApp for business.

Immediately, Pauline posted every item of produce she had and that, says Pauline is, “when things started to get better”. Her first online sale of bananas went for US $82, avocados now sell for up to US $0.82 per kilo, almost four times what she could earn at the market, and she now sells macadamia nuts directly the Kenya Nut Company.

Pauline says, “I didn’t get to complete my high school education…[but] joining Hand in Hand really helped me… [they] helped me plan my farm…and now I know selling online is better as compared to local sales.”

Meet Sara – Overcoming one of the biggest issues facing women in low income countries: the credit gap.

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Sara Moshi runs a thriving poultry business supplying hotels, supermarkets and street vendors in Moshi Town, northern Tanzania. The secret of her success, she says, was the commercial loan for US $570 which, “really boosted my business,” and is earning more – from US $18 a month to US $110 a month.

Sara’s commercial success is a rarity in Africa where, although one in four women is an entrepreneur, they struggle to access credit, as they rarely hold assets so don’t have sufficient collateral. In fact, globally, there’s a US $1.7 trillion gap between the amount of capital women want and the amount they get. If that gap were closed its estimated US $6 trillion would be added to global GDP.

Our solution: An accelerator scheme that equips women to move from subsistence to success

There are millions of under-served women just like Sara with the potential to expand their businesses, but who lack the credit, market connections and technical expertise to do so.

That’s why we’ve developed an ‘accelerator’ programme which equips women the skills they need to move women beyond the absolute Poverty Line of $2.15 a day to the lower middle-income poverty line of $3.20 a day.

Creditaccess

Supported by her Hand in Hand business trainer, Sara was able to secure a loan with our commercial finance partner. She provided detailed bookkeeping and a business plan setting out her ambition to buy 200 chickens, the cost of feeding, vaccinating and housing those chickens, the expected sales, profits and the repayment schedule.

Having attended Hand in Hand’s business training sessions, Sara knew credit alone would not bring business success – she needed the farming skills to take care of her investment and the market connections to secure sales and profits.

Farming skills

Sara built a bigger chicken coop to make sure the chickens had enough light and space, made sure she had the correct feed and put plans in place for the necessary vaccinations. Finally, Sara decided to follow Hand in Hand’s advice and invest her loan in the “Sasso” breed because they would grow more quickly than the indigenous breed.

Market connections

Sara also researched her competitors: who was selling chickens to which outlets and how much were they charging? Then she contacted the buyers directly, securing several regular clients in nearby Moshi Town.

The business has transformed life at home. Sara has built a brand-new kitchen with a modern oven, has tiled the floors throughout her home, and repainted the house.

Looking back Sara says, “We are just housewives, but we sat with experts (Hand in Hand) who showed us how it could be done.”

Meet Shaima – running her own honey business in Afghanistan

Posted on by admin_handinhand

In Afghanistan, the restrictions on women’s movement and their ability to work, combined with natural disasters and the breakdown of the banking system, has pushed millions of Afghans into food insecurity.

Shaima, from northeastern Afghanistan, is just one of the thousands of women who we have equipped to start their own small business, based at home. Shaima, like her friends and neighbours, used to rely on occasional work in the fields to help support the family. But, paid partly in cash and partly in wheat and vegetables, there was never enough to pay for food and rent, orthe medication Shaima so desperately needed for her depression and anxiety.

Today, thanks to Hand in Hand’s business training programme, Shaima is running a successful beekeeping business from her back garden.

Sweet success

Shaima’s first 5kg of honey sold for some US $12 per kilo, which not only paid for her medication but has given her hope. Shaima explains:

“Before, I was losing hope and motivation to work because I was suffering from depression and life was hard… Now, I realised I could be someone who helps her family and her community…And I can feel like that even as someone who had once experienced depression and thought life was a waste.”

Meet Evelyn – earning more since changing the way she farms

Posted on by admin_handinhand

Because smallholder farmers, like Evelyn Syombua, produce one third of the world’s food they are also the key components in the global transition towards a more sustainable, regenerative way of farming that will boost yields and income.

For women like Evelyn, regenerative agriculture means a future on land she had been on the point of abandoning.

Equipping women farmers with the skills to thrive

Hand in Hand equips women with regenerative agriculture techniques to restore soils damaged by years of monoculture farming, increase their yields and the business skills to scale up their agri-business so they can reach larger and more profitable value chains.

Diversification

Today, Evelyn rotates a variety of crops including sorghum, cow peas, pigeon peas, green grams – even leaving some areas fallow to allow the soil to recover. She’s planted fruit trees that yield fruit and enhance the local biodiversity, prevent soil erosion and provide shade for the animals.

She’s also learned to collect the rain when it comes and then use it for irrigation during dry periods.

Farming with intent

Moreover, everything on the farm has a purpose. Low growing crops such as sweet potato, reduce water loss. The fodder feeds the 15 goats and 10 chickens, the animal waste provides the basis for the fertiliser. Fruit trees provide food for the family and shade for the animals. Even old milk cartons provide the perfect ‘home’ in which to germinate seedlings.

As a result, Evelyn has noticed a real increase in the harvest from two bags of beans to at least four. It means there’s more food on the table and even some to sell at the market – earning more from the beans alone from KES 2,500 (US $16) to KES 4,500 (US $30) each harvest.

“The revival of the farm business has also given me hope and a direction on choices to make,” says Evelyn.

Meet Veneranda and Wilfred – challenging social norms that hold women back.

Posted on by admin_handinhand

One in four African women is an entrepreneur, yet women face significant additional barriers when it comes to earning. That’s why Hand in Hand is equipping women living below the poverty line to launch profitable businesses and shifting social attitudes that prevent women working outside the home.

Before joining Hand in Hand, life for Veneranda and Wilfred was much like every other family in their village in Arusha in northern Tanzania: she took care of the home, he earned the money.

Changing the rules of the game for women entrepreneurs

In many communities, it’s believed a woman working outside the home undermines the man’s position as the family’s breadwinner. What’s more, women are expected to be solely responsible for domestic labour and caregiving, leaving the little time to run a business.

That’s why, at Hand in Hand, we involve the whole community, especially men and local leaders, in breaking down these barriers – so women can participate in the economy as equals, with the power to launch their own businesses and lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

It was only when Veneranda and Wilfred joined Hand in Hand’s that they both began to realise the possibilities life offered if they worked together as team.

Veneranda started a small business buying and selling groceries, but Wilfred realised that if she grew the vegetables herself, they could make more money. So, for the first time, Wilfred gave Veneranda a plot of land for her to grow vegetables, which she could then take to market.

Today Veneranda’s business earns about US $25 a week – tripling the family earnings. Two days each week Veneranda takes her produce to the market and Wilfred stays at home to look after the children, take care of the chickens and cook the meals.

Looking back, Wilfred says, “I had not realised what a burden it was to be the only one responsible for earning the money. Life is not just materially better now it is also easier for both of us.”

Credit for photograph:

© Cartier Philanthropy / Karin Schermbrucker.