Last year, Traidcraft Exchange - the charity arm of the Tyneside fair trade organisation - organised the Hidden Entrepreneur appeal to help people in the developing world who want to run their own business. The organisation’s Mary Milne visited a project in Kenya to see how the scheme worked.
Kenya - a land of lions, elephants and giraffes, and the subject of countless wildlife documentaries. And of course it is also home to nearly 50m Kenyans, many of whom live below the poverty line.
Rising to more than 5,000 metres at its tallest point, Mount Kenya is covered with snow most of the year, despite being just a few miles from the equator. When I visited in April, it was mostly hidden behind a thick layer of cloud, only emerging for fleeting moments in all its majesty.
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The slopes around the extinct volcano are lush and fertile, making it the perfect land for farming. What’s more, fresh vegetables grow well here and find a ready market among the growing middle classes in Kenya’s cities.
Despite this, many of the people who farm in this area still struggle to make ends meet. In the Meru County region, 70% of farming households live in poverty, with many families surviving on just £2 a day. But it’s not for a lack of hard work, talent or determination that so many in this region are unable to earn a good living – far from it.
Last year, Traidcraft Exchange launched the Hidden Entrepreneur appeal to support budding entrepreneurs in developing countries – people who have more than enough talent to earn a good living, but lack the opportunity. The British public raised an amazing £540,000, which was then matched pound for pound by the 海角视频 Government through its 海角视频 Aid Match scheme, bringing the final total to more than £1.1m.
Part of this money is being used to fund a new venture in Meru County, Kenya, where Traidcraft Exchange will be working with mostly women who earn a living farming vegetables. I was fortunate enough to visit the project earlier this year.
While I was there, I met Chelegat, a vegetable farmer and mother of five. Chelegat lives in the village of Ngare Ngare, which is reached by driving through the Lewa Wildlife conservancy.
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“I hope that if we come together – all of us as farmers – we will be able to have a voice in negotiations and begin to dictate how to sell,” she told me. “Right now, I’ve invested a lot of money in seed, but what I grow doesn’t give me the return on my investments. I hope that through the project we’ll be able to tackle this.”
Seeds pose a problem for farmers in Meru County, since they are very expensive and sometimes don’t germinate. Another challenge is getting hold of enough agricultural inputs – such as organic fertiliser – to maximise their yields, to which end the project is supporting farmers to group together in cooperatives. By working as a collective, they will be in a stronger position to lobby and get hold of the services they need.
“I’m proud that through my work on the farm, I’ve been able to educate my children through school and college, and feed and clothe them as well,” Chelegat told me. “You should continue doing this because the project is helping so many people.”
Chelegat’s sister and her sister’s child are both disabled. Now three years old, her child cannot talk and is unable to sit up. If Chelegat could earn more money from her farm, she would use it to give them proper medical care and take care of them both.
Later on, I spoke to Nasaama, an enterprising farmer who grows onions and tomatoes commercially, as well as growing other crops to feed her family. While three of her four adult children have now moved out, she still supports her youngest daughter and nephew who are studying, and her three-year-old granddaughter.
Nasaama faces another problem common to farmers in the area – that of unscrupulous middlemen, who buy her produce at a low price and take a large cut of the profits.
“I hope that in future I’ll be able to fetch my own orders and have contact with the trader,” she told me. “That would make me very happy, because it’s through the broker that I’m losing income.”
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Through the project, she has started learning how to grow potatoes and carrots alongside the tomatoes and onions she grows already.
“Sometimes when I plant, I run into losses – so then I take a break and just grow food crops,” she told me. “I’m willing to take on growing all four crops, because I’ve got the interest. I’m ready to start.”
Being able to increase her income through farming would make an enormous difference to Nasaama and her family. “
It would be such a joy to do other projects like educating my children further, beyond where they are now and to support them to fulfil their aspirations,” she told me. “I have so many dreams that I have shelved for now – if I had extra income I’d be able to pursue them.”
The Hidden Entrepreneur appeal has now ended, but Traidcraft Exchange’s life-changing work with some of the world’s most vulnerable farmers, workers and artisans is far from over.
* More information on Traidcraft Exchange’s work is available at www.traidcraftexchange.org.