Jerito

Jerito

The Jerito group members mostly live in the Majengo area – around 10 km north of the Kenya Care office in Mtwapa. One of the former members of Ebenezer group – Kibibi Kaingu – did the recruitment of the group members and this helped a lot. Earlier it was quite difficult to recruit members for our program because of the stigma. Kibibi became the chairlady of this Self-Help Group.

The group started in November 2016 with 25 members and 23 of them finished the first education program end of January 2017. This is the first group that also had 2 couples as members. However, this gave a lot of challenges. Especially when the couple had some problems, it was difficult for them to discuss this openly in the group. For that reason, we decided in 2021 that we still motivate couples to become members, but they have to join different groups, so that both of them feel free to discuss their personal issues in the group.

Other characteristics of this group:
– Strong leadership
– Stigma decreased a lot and some of them don’t have any stigma anymore.
– Very creative group and talented. They loved to make their own songs, poems, and dances.Over time 3 members left because they moved to another place in the country and 5 others left for other reasons (among them 2 husbands). Fifteen members finished the 4-year program successfully in the beginning of March 2021.

Part of the program is also that the group members save a small amount every week. This group really understood the advantage of saving and at their graduation they had managed to save in total an amount of Ksh 168.000. With this amount the group decided to continue giving loans to each other after the graduation.

At the graduation event all graduating members got a nice gift and we also gave an award to the best performing member of this group. For this Award we chose Grace Fondo, mother of 2 children. During the Kenya Care program, she managed to start a small hair saloon as well as a tailoring shop. She is a very active member and acted several years as the secretary. But she is also talented, wrote several poems and a great performer. Beside the Award certificate she got a new sewing machine, which will be of great help to her.