KRCS BUILDING RESILIENCE OF URBAN COMMUNITIES THROUGH INNOVATION
To alleviate poverty, donor development agencies and other actors engage in various poverty reduction strategies many of which unfortunately are often donor driven and ignorant of the strengths and opportunities provided by local communities or institutions. As a result, many of these initiatives are perceived as “charity” rather than building blocks towards local and long-lasting self-resilience. In addition, there is generally a lack of ownership on the part of the local population and beneficiaries and when the financial support comes to an end; the interest of the local population also dwindles.
In light of this background, Kenya Red Cross (KRCS) through financial and technical support from Danish Red Cross is implementing a resilience building project in Nairobi urban slums which among other areas supports localized community innovation ideas, encourages and links local business engagements with private sector as a robust approach towards building resilience. This promotes collective resilience building through co-creation with communities of sustainable economic enterprises. Through this project several initiatives aimed at promoting entrepreneurship development have been undertaken contributing to improved socio-economic conditions of community members.
KRCS has supported community members in Mukuru slum to organized themselves into groups, trained and coached them in entrepreneurship and business establishment as well as engaged and empowered them to find ways of mobilizing and harnessing locally available resources with an aim to establish income generating enterprises. One such group is Hope and Joy women group of Mukuru made up of 60 women living positively with HIV.The group was started as a support group brought together by the need to fight stigma and discrimination while promoting self-care and adherence to treatment as is indicated in the testimony by the groups’ chairlady.
“When first diagnosed I was adamant that I would fight this virus with natural therapies and stay off the medication for as long as possible. The long as possible turned out to be about three years, within that time my immune system was almost completely destroyed. I was not unwell but I lacked energy, I found myself needing afternoon naps and plenty of rest. I made the decision to go on medication after much deliberation and I was very afraid about taking such medicine without food .I was hopeless and scared. Not only was taking the HIV medication, to me, like a small defeat it was also finally realizing that this was all real. I really was HIV positive.” Loise, 52 years old.
After several mentoring and coaching sessions and training workshops with the group aimed at enhancing the groups’ entrepreneurship skills and creativity, the women came up with an idea to design and make a fireless cooker. This is a basket-like cooker that does not use fire or electricity. This is really unique and well thought as it contributes to reducing fire incidences in households as fires hazards are very common in many households in the slum caused by negligent acts such as leaving food cooking on a stove unattended, or cooking on illegally connected electric installations/cookers. Additionally, many lives have been lost due to inhalation of carbon monoxide when cooking using charcoal in poorly ventilated houses or even fire accidents resulting from children left to prepare family meals without supervision. The fireless cooker works in such a way that it maintains the boiling temperature of the food hours after it has been removed from the fire as it turns into a thermo flask. The basket thus needs no monitoring hence no risk of leaving the food on a stove unattended.
The baskets are made from local and cheaply available materials such as reeds, black fabrics and black sheets and as such their production costs are very low and reduce cost of domestic fuel thus freeing up the family income for other uses.
The group is selling the product to various households in in the community Mukuru and neighboring slums thereby generating income for its members and empowering them financially. To further build their resilience, KRCS is encouraging and teaching the members the importance of saving and consequently the group has formed a branch of its own for savings and loaning purpose. The group is currently undergoing weekly business engagement sessions with support from KRCS. The sessions emphasis on values of mutual trust, motivation towards economic activities, business operations, internal problems resolution, effective leadership, and support towards establishing other ventures. KRCS also approached several actors to link the women to market and Nairobi county government has expressed the willingness to support the group in domestic market as well possibility to export this product.
