Our Season of Gratitude

This year, we're highlighting the voices and experiences of the women we serve in rural Kenya. Their stories are a testament to the power of investing into local communities, prioritizing the contributions of women, and working collaboratively to create change.

Your Gift Multiplies. Their Dignity Compounds.

This isn't charity—it's investment in women who are ready to transform their own lives. They have the drive. The intelligence. The determination. What they lack is access. Your year-end gift to Zawadisha changes that.

Every dollar you give funds microloans that women repay and we relend. That means your single donation creates waves of change: one gift becomes two impacts, then three, then four. A solar lamp you fund today lights up multiple homes over the next five years. A rainwater tank you provide gives multiple women their time back. Your generosity doesn't just help once—it multiplies.

  • $25 — Send Knowledge Into the Community

    Your $25 sends one of our Peer Educators into the community to train dozens of women on business skills, agriculture techniques, and financial literacy. These aren't classroom lectures—they're practical, life-changing sessions where women learn to budget for their families, start small businesses, make soap, and weave baskets they can sell at market. One peer educator. One training session. Dozens of women are equipped with knowledge that spreads from neighbor to neighbor, mother to daughter. The skills they learn today become the businesses they build tomorrow and the financial wisdom they pass on for generations. You're not just funding one training—you're funding a ripple of capability that transforms entire communities, one empowered woman at a time.

  • $75 — Fuel Dignity and Save Time

    Your $75 provides a clean cookstove that transforms daily life. Women who once spent hours gathering firewood and breathing toxic smoke while cooking now prepare meals quickly on efficient stoves that use a fraction of the fuel. Those reclaimed hours? She invests them in her farm, her business, her children. The health benefits are immediate—reduced respiratory problems, fewer burns, cleaner air for developing lungs. And the dignity piece matters: when a woman brings this kind of transformative asset into her home through her own smart financial decision, her family's respect for her grows. Your gift doesn't just provide a stove—it provides time, health, and earned dignity that ripples through her entire household.

  • $100 — Give Light, Unlock Potential

    Your $100 provides a solar lamp system that changes everything after dark. Children who once squinted over homework by expensive, smoky kerosene light now study under clean, bright solar power. Mothers who spent precious shillings on kerosene redirect that money to school fees and food. And here's the income piece: neighbors pay to charge their mobile phones using the solar system, creating a small revenue stream that helps repay the loan. One lamp. Healthier lungs. Better grades. Extra income. And because the loan gets repaid and relent, your $75 eventually becomes $150 of impact, then $300, lighting up multiple households and multiple futures.

  • $250 — Give Back Six Hours Every Day

    Your $250 provides a rainwater collection tank—the single most transformative item we offer. Imagine getting six hours of your life back. Every single day. That's what happens when a woman no longer walks three hours to the river and three hours back, hauling heavy containers. She uses those hours to farm, to earn income, to help with homework, to build something better. Her children stop missing school to help fetch water. Her body stops breaking down from brutal physical labor. And when that tank sits beside her home—gleaming proof of her smart investment—her husband brags about her to neighbors. One tank. 2,190 hours returned each year. Multiplied dignity. And because she repays the loan, your $250 eventually becomes $500 of impact, then $1,000, giving multiple women their lives back.

Why Microloans?

Because they make the impossible possible for rural Kenyan women

  • The Problem

    In rural Kenya, a woman's day starts at 4 AM. She'll walk three hours to fetch water. Three more to collect firewood. By nightfall, she's exhausted, her children study by smoky kerosene lamps, and tomorrow will be exactly the same. She's trapped—not by lack of ambition, but by blocked potential. She knows a rainwater tank would change everything. She understands a solar lamp would save money and help her children excel. She's ready to work, to pay, to invest. But traditional systems have locked her out. Banks won't lend to her. Retailers won't extend credit. Microfinance comes with crushing interest rates. So her potential—and her family's future—remains frozen.

  • The Solution

    Zawadisha breaks this cycle with a radically simple idea: give women access to the household items they need through fair, community-based microloans. No predatory interest. No impossible requirements. Just practical items—rainwater tanks, solar lights, clean cookstoves—that create immediate change, paired with training on how to maximize their impact. Women pay back loans by monetizing the very items we provided: renting out chairs, charging neighbors' phones with solar panels, or simply from the money they save by not buying kerosene. The model proves what we knew all along—these women were never the problem. Access was.

  • Our Impact

    When Jane received her rainwater tank, something unexpected happened. Her husband praised her publicly. "Without my wife," he told neighbors, "we wouldn't have this." That moment—that recognition—changed everything. Now Monica spends her six reclaimed hours farming. Her daughters study under solar light instead of kerosene smoke. She's teaching other women soap-making and basket-weaving. This is what happens when potential gets unblocked: women don't just repay loans—they build businesses, mentor others, and command respect in their homes and communities. Women tell us Zawadisha gave them something they didn't have before: dignity. Not charity. Not handouts. Dignity earned through access to tools that let them transform their own lives.

  • Why Donate

    Your gift doesn't create dependency—it unblocks potential. When you fund a microloan, you're giving a woman the access she deserved all along. She takes it from there: repaying the loan, starting businesses, earning respect, changing her family's trajectory. And here's what makes this powerful: every loan gets repaid and relent to the next woman. Your $100 solar lamp investment doesn't help one woman once—it helps multiple women over multiple years. Your $500 rainwater tank becomes $1,000 of impact, then $1,500, then $2,000. One gift. Compounding dignity. This year-end, fund access. Unblock potential. Give dignity that multiplies across entire communities.

Transparency & Trust

Zawadisha is a 501 (c) (3), and all donations are tax-deductible. We have received the Gold Rating from Candid (formerly Guidestar and the Foundation Center) for our transparency in reporting.

You will receive a receipt via email upon donating. If you leave your phone number, Monica will call you personally to thank you (be on the lookout for that +254 area code).

Prefer to send a check? Make checks out to Zawadisha and send to 3983 S. McCarran Blvd. #481, Reno, NV 89502.

If you donate $100 or more, please include a valid address in your donation and we will ship you one beautiful basket from our collection.