Nyamira North Women Savings and Credit Cooperative

Nyamira North Women Savings and Credits Cooperative (NNWS) is a female-owned organization founded in 2014. It offers savings and credit facilities to its members and implements livelihood projects in various agricultural value chains.

The project with ISF improves NNWS’s operational and commercial capacity and its members’ knowledge, skills and networks in selected value chains. The project builds collaboration with experts and other businesses for value addition and improves women’s access to livelihood resources such as land, water, technology and finance.

The project includes activities to reduce violence against women and girls. The community dialogues organized by the Muungano Gender Forum will complement these activities. Also, the project improves NNWS’s policies to enhance the opportunities for disabled people to benefit from the cooperative’s services.

The main development processes in 2024 are as follows:

• To complement the ongoing peer training program, peer advisers and women will be trained in business planning and monitoring and get refresher trainings in climate smart farming. The project will support the cooperative to develop a business model, based on which it can provide services for its over 2000 members.
• The project will test methods and technologies and train women in vegetable and mushroom storage, drying, grinding and packaging to ensure the product quality. Regular monitoring and advice sessions between experts (FAO, MoA, KIRDI etc.) and women, including people with disabilities, will continue.
• The project has established a collection centre for storing, processing and selling of the cooperative products. The next step is to equip local satellite collection centers and to map transport solutions to safeguard the product quality. Also, the project will increase the area for vertical farming, improve access to water, and scale up production of seeds, mushroom spawn and fertilizers (vermicompost and vermiliquid).
• The cooperative’s entire quality chain must be covered by national certifications. NNWS will renew the existing certification and licenses and apply new ones with the support from the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) and the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS).
• NNWS, ISF, University of Vaasa (UWASA) and Strathmore University in Kenya will pilot cooperation in 2024. ISF Livelihood Coordinator in Kenya will participate in UWASA online course ‘“Food entrepreneurship, sustainability and innovation practices in African context”. UWASA will organize a project learning course with a title “Consumer marketing and branding in food value chains in Kenya”, that will contain a field mission in Nyamira. The case examples are drawn from the NNWS project, and the students will co-innovate solutions together with the project beneficiaries and local experts.
• NNWS continues the contract farming of indigenous vegetables for Mace Foods Ltd, and will try to negotiate new business contracts, too.
• NNWS and its members participate in Soko Freshi trade fairs (organised by Muungano Gender Forum) to showcase their products, map new buyers and input suppliers.
• NNWS has trained four paralegals that will assist organizing sessions in VAWG prevention and strengthen the reporting on VAWG cases in the project communities. The project will organize men only discussions about harmonious and equal decision making at the household level. Also, it will organise forums where women groups come together to discuss VAWG and other problems topical in the daily lives