The Village Net (TVN) empowers impoverished, marginalized girls and women in rural Kenya through microfinance, education, and health initiatives that help them to break out of poverty and respond positively to the pressing needs of their families and communities.
The challenge(s) that The Village Net Kenya is addressing:
In Kenya, girls and women constitute an overwhelming 70% of the almost 20 million people living in extreme poverty (or earning under $1.25/day). Poor sanitation and malnutrition, combined with a chronic shortage of economic and educational opportunities, cripple both the earning and learning potential of girls and women throughout Kenya. This also leaves them more vulnerable to gender-based injustices and harms such as child marriage, domestic violence, high infant and maternal mortality, and HIV/AIDS.
The Village Net supports these girls and women in creating their own sustainable livelihoods, and seeks to reduce their vulnerability to gender-based injustice through a variety of programs that provide vital access to basic healthcare, business education and literacy schemes, scholarship opportunities and microfinance initiatives designed to liberate the entrepreneurial potential of rural Kenyan women. The Village Net collaborates with educational institutions and other resource providers in Kenya to ensure that women and girls are equipped with the skills and opportunity necessary for them to become self-sufficient and overcome the grinding cycle of poverty.
You can be a changemaker!
You can contribute to TVN’s work and have a life-changing impact on the girls and women it empowers in many ways: by sponsoring an academic scholarship for a young girl, by contributing to seed capital for a microloan to a blossoming entrepreneur, or simply by spreading the word about The Village Net’s crucial work.
The difference you can make: the impact of your giving
Your donation helps ensure that young girls will not only expand their educational potential, but will also be protected from the child marriage and domestic violence.
You can help women escape the harms of poverty by equipping them with essential entrepreneurial skills, sustainable employment opportunities, and practical hope for a healthier, brighter future for themselves, their children and their families.
An example of the impact of The Village Net Kenya’s work:
Mary, from Kenya’s Maasai tribe, single-handedly raised her five children after their biological father left when they were infants. Before joining The Village Net, she was employed in an agro-vet market, which enabled her to feed her children and send them to school. But a severe drought put an end to her job.
After meeting The Village Network, Mary secured her first loan of 3500 Kenyan shillings (approx. 41 USD or 32 EUR). She bought two rams and paid back her loan on time, which enabled her to assume a second round of loans of KSh. 5000 (approx. 59 USD or 45 EUR). She then sold her two rams and was able to open her very own agro-vet market. Mary aims to continue to grow her market and hopes one day to own one of the biggest markets of this kind in her home town.
Relevant Country Data
Capital: Nairobi
Population: 41,609,000
GDP per capita: $1,622
Population living below poverty line: 47.8%
% of women in higher education: 36%
Infant mortality rate (probability of dying between birth and age 1 per 1000 live births): 81
Maternal mortality ratio (deaths of women per 100,000 live births): 530
Life expectancy: 54 years
