Economic Empowerment of Marginalized Communities
[Music]
what keeps you up at night
for me it’s the lack of economic
empowerment
for the marginalized communities and the
non-literates
i’m so grateful to be a small part in
elevating the lives of
so many who continue to be on the
sidelines
allow me to take you on my journey in
the quest
of economic empowerment for the
marginalized community
these are the groups that are forgotten
and as we notice the marginalized
communities do not think about economic
empowerment
the yarn for it one afternoon
eight years ago i was seated at the
library
reading for my commercial law exam
i was so eager to grasp each and every
section
of the mammoth law books
and along my journey in the university
of nairobi
i really wanted to help but i didn’t
know how
and when i was seated in this library
received a strange call and before i
received this call
my friends used to make fun of me and
say
the library is your second home
and i would look at them and just smile
giggle but on this specific day
when i got this call i was in the
library and my phone
my phone was on a silent mode
but the caller was terribly insistent
calling after
every five minutes and after about
10 calls i had to walk out of the
library
and pick this call i’m glad that i
picked this call
it was a strange voice
of a man that i’ve never speak to before
and he introduced himself and said my
name is ali
i am the community elder at park road
i was recommended to you by a former
chair lady
and i’ve heard about your community work
over the last five years and today i
would like to invite you
to our community at park road
i want up and i want us to set up a
program
to empower these non-literate women in
our community
to become financially independent
and create sustainable livelihoods
for a moment i froze
i did not understand how this gentleman
will assign such a big task to a 22 year
old
and he noticed the silence on my end
and he asked again will you be able to
take part in this project
and not to disappoint him
i said yes let me see what i can do
about
it but immediately i finished this
call i sat down
on the benches next to the hostels
deeply thinking what did i sign up for
can i transform these women to become
financially independent
and together with the community leaders
at the park road mosque we started our
first pilot project
to empower these non-literate
communities
to learn basic skills
and after starting the project
this was my awakening moment in life
it was the unforgettable journey
that led me to discover for anyone to
attain
economic empowerment they need four
main things firstly
the skills that can be monetized
one needs to understand that they need
to have skills
that can be monetized according to a
world bank report of 2017
of sub-saharan skills development it
stated that africa does not lack
opportunities what it lacks
is enough people with the right skills
to exploit the boundless opportunities
in africa
it further states that a third of the
population
in the low and the middle income areas
lack basic skills such as problem
solving
communication skills behavioral skills
and this unskilled labor limits
the economic investments into our
continent
and it reduces the productivity
of the labor market so when we started
the pilot project
with mr ali’s community our aim was to
transform
the non-literate the marginalized
community
to access basic skills
to ensure that they can be financially
independent
they can monetize their own skills
and so at this moment
one of our beneficiaries of this project
was
a lady called mamasham
she moved from the streets
and today she’s sustainable having her
wholesale
business at park road and despite
learning all these skills she never gave
up
she went back to her community to help
the rest and what does that tell you
about ripple effect
help one person you never know
how many people they’re helping
secondly we need to access the right
information
and knowledge as a young girl growing up
what scared me the most was a thought
a simple but a heavy thought
what if my parents were not educated
to some of you it might sound trivial
but to me it costs so much
pain brought some chills down my spine
and made my blood run cold
in my entire generation my father
and my mother are the only educated ones
and despite the struggles they went
through to access education
they ingrained in us more than just
education from the formal education
to traditional indigenous knowledge
to crucial life skills to survive in
life
and all this they acquired along the way
and there’s something unique about my
upbringing
between the age of 12 and 18
i felt like i was in a police camp
it was the tough drill for me
do this do that don’t do this learn this
and i did not understand why i needed to
learn
all these skills and some of these
skills range from
farming tailoring kneating
selling chicken raring cooking
and the challenge was not to learn all
these skills
the challenge was to monetize them and
create
an income generating activity
which enabled me to develop a producer
mindset
and not a consumer mindset
and thirdly one needs
to understand the value of the resources
around them
do you know the value of the resources
around you as africans
i’ll take you back to my village
where i have a friend by the name leila
leila is a 15 year old girl beautiful
nomadic girl
she yarns to become economically
empowered
and she tells me her stories of how she
has to walk
in the scorching sun in garissa
in search of water and green pasture for
her livestock
she even gets severe headaches and when
she’s walking on these dusty
rocky roads all she can find
is a green magenga tree
and for those of you who don’t know
mavenge mavenga is the poisonous tree
that only grows in semi-arid areas
and what does that mean for leila she
has to walk
long miles so that she can find
water and green posture
that’s how she strives hard to be
empowered
but what is different about leila she
is the breadwinner of her family
and when i ask her do you want to pursue
education
and learn something and she tells me
education is
a privilege you know where we come from
we have few teachers i have over 15
siblings to fend for
what do i do i want to learn but i can’t
and then i thought what can be done for
her
and so leila has the skills but
she lacks the knowledge the information
to understand deeply
the value of the resources she has
for her she sees economic value in her
commerce
and one common costs a thousand u.s
dollars which is
a hundred thousand kenya shillings
and does she understand this value
no finally
we need an enabling environment
this enabling environment that supports
you
social connection is the currency of the
social wealth
and in our african societies we’ve lived
in communal
nature we’ve believed in communal nature
and in the yester years african
societies have
never left anyone hungry
they used to think about their next door
neighbor
when i visited malindi in the
in in 2017 i came to realize
how the neighbors were so caring
they thought about you some of them will
feed you
some of them will go around
and ask anything that you need
and so i came to see how loving our
african
communities are i know you’ve heard the
famous statement
do you have connections do you know your
neighbors
but do we actually in this day and age
check up on our neighbors and to and to
just see
are they okay
so that social connections really
matters
if we are yearning to be economically
empowered
you’ve heard about are you well
connected do you have connection for you
to get
this job but we’ve forgotten that social
connection
comes from family relatives
and the community at large
you need to have someone who is your
godfather up there
they say but how do you invest in that
connection if you don’t have the
connections right now
invest your efforts in creating valuable
connections with
people your network
is your net worth and if we
implement this apprenticeship
model that we used to have as african
communities
african communities economically
empowered
the future generation by passing down
knowledge traditional indigenous
knowledge
information skills
through the apprenticeship model your
grandparents your uncles your aunties
will come in
and teach you something
but we have neglected that culture
so if we come together and implement
these four main things that i discovered
along the way
and it was affirmed in the world bank
reports
of 2017 that you need
skills that you can monetize
you also need an enabling environment
you also need to understand the value of
your resources
and so if you have these four main
things
then we can know that we have a
structural transformation
that will lead to an economic growth
and what we need to understand is
adam grant says that for our society to
be
happy it cannot have
half of its population remain poor
so today’s generation you need to pass
down these skills this information
this traditional indigenous knowledge to
the future generation
to reduce the unskilled labor
and also on the other hand
african organization ngos skills
training companies
and the government need to rethink their
model
of empowering non non-literate and
marginalized communities
and finally to revive our economy
we need a paradigm shift which starts
with you and i thank you
[Music]