Mashinani Program

About 70% of Kenyans live in rural areas(KNBS) and depend on subsistence rain fed agriculture which should create the much needed jobs and wealth. However, livelihoods and economic activities are highly vulnerable to climatic fluctuations in space and time given farming is susceptible to climate change and extreme weather events. Land and environmental degradation is one of the most serious challenges affecting Kenya, causing an estimated annual economic loss of $390 million (Sh38.9 billion) or three per cent of the GDP. Degradation of water catchment areas due to human settlement, pollution, poor waste management and deforestation, agricultural activities, and encroachments has had huge impacts on environmental conservation efforts. Land and environmental degradation is one of the most serious challenges affecting Kenya Degradation of water catchment areas due to human settlement, pollution, poor waste management and deforestation, agricultural activities, and encroachments has had huge impacts on environmental conservation efforts. Rural small-scale farmers are therefore, disproportionately affected by poverty, particularly extreme poverty. Being a young farmer in a part of the world that is severely affected by climate change can be very difficult. Being a young farmer in a part of the world that is severely affected by climate change can be very difficult. With the ensuing youth unemployment and extreme effects of climate change, the youth cannot be assured of quality life in the future.

In addition, social perceptions, low productivity and profits make agriculture less attractive for youth who increasingly migrate out from rural areas to urban centres in search of better prospects. Young men and women migrate for similar reasons: employment opportunities, education, escaping inadequate infrastructure and access to basic amenities at their rural homes. When the young people arrive in the cities, they are met with lack of employment as the core challenge while the high cost of living comes second. Most of these young people cannot find employment in the formal sectors and if they get some form of employment, they make it in the informal sector where the pay is inadequate. Women also have to contend with exploitation and fear of physical or sexual abuse. As a result, rural-urban migration causes proliferation of slums in the urban destinations where poverty reigns. The young people have to contend with problems, such as, poor sanitation, insecurity and poor housing. Yet, agriculture can represent a huge opportunity for the creation of employment in rural areas. Urban markets are growing, from rural towns to larger cities, and strengthened rural-urban linkages hold many employment prospects both in rural and urban areas. Youth unemployment has been described as a ticking bomb, with frustrated young men and women susceptible to drugs, prostitution, or even being lured into terrorism.

Through our Mashinani Social Entrepreneurship Program, we provide a sustainable and integrated development service to vulnerable and marginalized young people in rural communities. MASHINANI is a Swahili term meaning ‘grassroots’. We implement various appropriate social agro-entrepreneurship stimulation programs through agribusiness activities, to empower vulnerable young people, in their own development efforts, in order to overcome poverty. This program is a structured intervention that gives young people greater control over the conditions that affect their lives, however, it does not solve all the problems faced by a local community, but it does build up confidence to tackle problems such as unemployment and climate change as effectively as possible in alleviating poverty. Through the Mashinani Social Entrepreneurship Program, we foster rural-urban linkages, promote the investment of remittances in rural areas and encourage coherence between social protection, rural-urban migration and agribusiness stimulation programs. Indeed, promoting rural youth employment and social agro-entrepreneurship along sustainable agricultural and food value chains is key to reduce the adverse drivers of rural-urban migration and generate viable options for those who want to remain. In this regard, this program is a skilled process and part of its approach is the belief that the young people cannot be helped unless they themselves agree to this process, by committing their time, passion and available resources.

We work at the level of local groups, where they attend training programs, and in some instance we provide grants. After trainings, we make follow-ups to monitor the beneficiaries in their daily income earning activities, bookkeeping and time management.

Strategies

Climate Resilient Farming

In Kenya, the majority of the population depends on subsistence farming in a system characterized by high forest landscape degradation, low soil fertility, erratic rainfall, small farm sizes, and a high population in the productive areas. To meet the increasing food demand of the increasing population, the agricultural practices have been expanding to forests and biodiversity hotspot areas. At the same time, climate change is posing severe challenges resulting in low agricultural production and low resilience capacities of smallholder communities in this region. To address the challenges, evidence-based and eco-friendly technologies and approaches are crucial for improving food security and livelihoods in the region. Enhancing the production of food on less land in more sustainable ways will improve the capacities of smallholder communities to cope with climate shocks and improve the resiliency of communities and ecosystems. Through Mashinani Social Entrepreneurship Program, we help young farmers improve production and make the most of their land. In this way, they make a decent living from farming, while protecting the environment for years to come. The program focuses on unleashing the productive power of Kenya’s smallholder farmers, who manage 80% of the country’s farmland. By empowering young farmers to grow crops and keep livestock, we help them make the most of their land. We focus more on organic farming thus advocating for sound ecological farming techniques. We endeavor to let young farmers understand that it is now a global need for human beings to get involved in life activities that promotes environmental sustainability. This is because in agriculture organic farming approach is the only way for attaining a green environment. Unfortunately, most small holder farmers lack necessary skill, knowledge and information for organic farming yet they form the largest percentage of Kenya population. We provide young farmers with high-quality seeds for drought-tolerant crops, so that they could collect and store seeds from the harvest to use the following season. We facilitate extension services by professionals in other disciplines to share knowledge and through this we enable small scale young famers to become successful social agro-entrepreneurs as well as major supporting pillar for employment in subsidiary industries. Eventually, we link the young farmers with various market actors.

Market Linkage

In Kenya, small scale farmers are caught in vicious cycle characterized by low risk taking ability, low investment, low productivity, weak market orientation, low value addition and low margins. One of the key impediments to breaking this vicious cycle is an acute lack of market linkages that deprives them of efficient market access. Middlemen bridge the gap between farms and markets, and earn margins at every stage of the distribution chain, leaving very little for the small scale farmers. Recognizing this market gap, Goblis Foundation is creating market linkages for young social agro-entrepreneurs and currently we are exploring ways to leverage the power of the internet and increasing mobile ubiquity to provide direct market linkages between smallholder farmers and buyers through the existing platforms. By removing middlemen from the distribution chain, the linkage is helping small scale young farmers to secure higher prices for their produce. They also reduce farmers’ working capital requirements by guaranteeing purchase and ensuring payments at the are done promptly. Cotton Market: All the cotton lint produced will be sold to Labl Group East Africa, a Kenyan Sustainable Fashion Company which will also be supplying seeds through a binding contract. Labl Group East Africa, will continue to provide the infrastructure and expertise to gin the cotton locally, maximizing farmer prices, value-adding the local economy and producing world class, 100% African, sustainable, traceable garments.

How it Works

Mashinani Social Entrepreneurship Program works along our Jikimu Social Entrepreneurship Program at the initial stages but becomes different at the academy. We enable underserved young people in the rural areas to work their own way out of poverty by providing training, seeds, market linkages and microloans. We help them start successful businesses to build independence and financial resilience. The Mashinani model is designed to inspire and encourage underserved and vulnerable rural young people to embrace agro-entrepreneurship and actualized impactful sustainable agricultural and food production practices as a source of sustainable employment. This will in turn reduce the adverse rural-urban migration and generate viable options for those who want to remain and this helps them to become self-sufficient for their daily needs. As a result, over time the money they earn helps to provide food security, better housing, access to healthcare, and an education for their children. The Mashinani Program is multi-stem and it’s implemented as follows:

Jikimu Program Recruitment

In partnership with our partners in Kenya, and during Jikimu Program recruitment, we identify rural young men and women in focus areas who are most in need and have the potential to venture into sustainable farming in their community with a motivation to help them build independence and financial resilience. We conduct regular monthly training programs that are published on our Jikimu Website and relayed physically by our grassroots partners to enable us to identify potential young farmers with innovative ideas to attend physical training. In addition, in partnership with NGOs and CBOs running similar programs and with a database of potential beneficiaries, we conduct training together and in the process, we are able to identify qualified women innovators.

Jikimu Academy

Jikimu Social Entrepreneurship Academy will transform the marginalized and vulnerable young farmers into social agro-entrepreneurs through a cost-effective and efficient process through community volunteers. Jikimu Academy unbridles and nurtures social agro-entrepreneurship drive within each of the young farmers. Through personalized empowerment stages, the academy creates original projects or improves the existing ones to help the young farmers to engage in sustainable farming practices through a self-management processes to define their own path through community agro-entrepreneurship. Mentorship and training are conducted both online through our online learning management system and offline, through mentors and extension officers. The academy takes the innovation through various iteration cycles until a social business model is validated and traction gained. The training we provide ensures that the young people are equipped to manage their finances and create sustainable enterprises that will help them generate an income and provide for their families.

Farms Implementation

We recognize the need and value of promoting Integrated Crop Management through demonstration farm at various locations provided by the local community leaders. Our demonstration farms and setup in proximity of accessibility at various point and provided by the community and serve all farmers in our target area through training and capacity building. We provide young farmers with high-quality seeds for drought-tolerant crops, so that they could collect and store seeds from the harvest to use the following season. The young farmer’s solutions are ignited and formulated to tackle a social challenge for socio-economic and development challenge. We support them to start-up, test, and scale their social agro-enterprises by offering them all the necessary conditions for accessing knowledge, networks of partnerships, a small grant and give them an opportunity to fundraise from their friends, family and our networks on our UKenya Peer-to-Peer Crowdfunding Platform. The level of support and/or funding will be dependent on Goblis Foundation’s resources and abilities, and shall be provided on a discretionary basis.

Program Related Investments

We provide the beneficiaries with micro-loans that are based on group lending methodology where the beneficiaries form a group of 15 young farmers or more that becomes a borrowing group, but each person have their own farm to start or run. The group members co-guarantee each other’s loans. The group members use peer pressure to ensure loan repayments are done on time and in full. At least 15% of the required additional capital should be saved before loans applied for are processed and disbursed to the groups. Our repayment rates are 96%, hence, keeping in line with the best practices in the Microfinance Industry. After twelve months (on average) the young farmers will have repaid their loans and are earning a regular income. As a result, they can then apply for another loan to help grow their social agro-enterprises or the funds goes to other needy cases. We charge a simple interest of 5% to make micro-loans program sustainable.

Savings Scheme

We focus on informing the young farmers on the benefits of saving and encourage them to make modest savings. This is to provide insurance against future produce failure, family illness and other unpredictable situations. Consequently, this gives them confidence in their ability to weather whatever life throws at them. A built in saving scheme enables the young farmers grasp the essence of savings and to experience a process of financial discipline for 6 to 12 months’ period. Savings are handled and managed within and by group members and their group leaders. The groups are encouraged to open up Bank Accounts with our partner commercial banks for operations and keep the savings, which might be vital for larger commercial loan requisitions.

Extension Services

We have moved research findings to the farmers by expanding the on-farm demonstrations programs through farmer participatory training and promoting scientifically-based services. We have placed trained agronomists with appropriate and up-to-date technical knowhow for crop and pest management of organic cotton. The social agro-enterprises counselling and training continues throughout for 24 months and are linked to markets, assigned community cooperatives and mentors who walk with them to enhance their success chances. From growth strategy to impact assessment, our talented community mentors assist the young farmers tackle their most pressing challenges. Engagements continues by presenting actionable tips, tools and techniques towards achieving financial sustainability. If the young want to fundraise through UKenya, the successful social enterprises wanting to raise additional capital will be given an opportunity to crowdfund. We measure how the farmers we work with are performing to ensure that we continue to achieve our aim to help the underserved. By recording data about how often their families eat, the number of children at school, improvements to their living conditions and other relevant indicators, we can measure the impact our work is having on their family life.