The Makueni Women's Empowerment Project

About this program

This project aims to enhance the gender equality and economic empowerment of women and girls in the 6 Wards of Mbooni, Kenya. It seeks to help 10,848 direct beneficiaries by promoting economically viable enterprises and engaging the wider community in advancing gender equality and human rights. The project also supports 76,430 indirect beneficiaries by increasing household food security through campaigns, competitions, and community awareness programs. This includes high school and college activities, aiming to reach 4,030 students. The project uses Men and boys as project design informants and change agents to support women’s and girls' activities and dismantle barriers and negative gender perceptions or stereotypes. Project activities include: (1) establishing poultry production and sales groups; (2) providing women-led and women-majority cooperative enterprises start-up capital, including poultry, feed, equipment, etc.; (3) identifying and training men champions to help prevent, respond to, and mitigate sexual and gender-based violence (GBV); (4) training existing police, health workers, and counsellors on GBV support service operations and delivery mechanisms for vulnerable women; (5) training men, boys, women, and girls on dividing labour or unequal burden of care, decision-making, positive masculinity, and GBV roles; and (6) training women-majority cooperative enterprises in business management skills, profitability analysis, marketing, sales, and negotiation through market linkages.