Community Driven Microlending
Zawadisha provides simple but life changing household items like rainwater tanks, clean cook stoves, and solar lamps to women and their families through a lending model rooted in local communities.
When rural Kenyan women living in poverty have access to renewable energy and water, they see a dramatic increase in the quality of their lives. Money is spent on school fees for children instead of on kerosene lamps. Women can use the six hours they would have spent walking to a river for water or into the forest for fuel wood on income-generating activities. Women’s status in the home is elevated as they are the ones responsible for the dramatic changes that benefit the entire family.
Our approach meets the challenges and needs of rural Kenyan communities. By combining increased access to sustainable products with trainings on how to maximize their use, our members have the tools they need to drastically improve their own lives, their family's lives, and their communities.
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The Problem
Women, as the primary caregivers in the home, are the ones responsible for collecting water, finding fuel wood, cooking on dangerous rock stoves, and working by toxic kerosene and paraffin lamps.
Their lamps are dim and expensive, and they, along with the three rocks they use to cook on, create poor indoor air quality, and cause fires. Women often times spend up to 20 hours per week collecting water; this represents two full months of lost labor potential.
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The Impact
As a result, women are chronically time-poor. They are forced to make difficult decisions around seeking healthcare, earning an income, or attending to their children’s and their own education. Despite the innovations in clean energy and water, the cost is prohibitive for many rural families, making solar lamps, rain water tanks, and clean cook stoves out of reach.
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Our Solution
Traditional micro-finance institutions are not equipped to deal with these issues or this population. They struggle in rural areas because of minimal community engagement, low trust, and high fees. Therefore, communities continue to be left out and marginalized. That's where we come in.
Zawadisha's all women, all Kenyan team engages deeply with and learn from hundreds of women's groups in rural Kenya. Women choose their items, we deliver to their doorsteps, and they get to pay for them over time.
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How It Works
Women choose household items like solar lamps, clean cookstoves, rain water tanks, iron sheets, and even mattresses. Because they cannot afford to pay outright for these items, we provide the financing and deliver the items directly to them.
Over the course of six to twelve months, women make small payments and can apply for another loan once they have repaid.
Our local Peer Educators follow up with trainings on entrepreneurship, agriculture, leadership, financial literacy, and reproductive health.
By working with women's groups and applying a social capital model, we increase accountability for repayments, and these women are supported and encouraged to finish paying their loan by their peers.
Women no longer have to walk for hours to fetch water or lose productive time at night. Children stay in school because their school fees are paid and women gain respect in their homes and communities for spurring the increase in living standards.
Our model works in rural communities because it was designed specifically for them and it is run by them. Thesse women are agents for change.
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