From subsistence to business success - Hand in Hand’s model for rural women entrepreneurs

Pauline Ngari, CEO Hand in Hand Eastern Africa

Pauline Ngari

From subsistence to business success – Hand in Hand’s model for rural woman entrepreneurs

1. Rural entrepreneurship in the international development context

2. The Kenyan context3. Beyond microfinance – why

credit alone is not enough 4. An integrated business and

job creation model5. Working in partnership with

government6. Lessons for the international

stage

15th - 17th June, 2013

Freshier, Greenhouse farmer

Pauline Ngari

Rural entrepreneurship in the development context

• Three out of four of the world’s poor live in rural areas in developing countries.

• Agriculture is a source of livelihoods for an estimated 86% of rural people (2.5 billion people) and provides jobs for 1.3 billion smallholders and landless workers.

• Just 4% of official development assistance goes on agriculture.

• More than 60% of employed women in sub-Saharan Africa work in agriculture.

• Agriculture is x 4 more effective in raising income

15th - 17th June, 2013

Pauline Ngari

Kenya – a conducive policy and credit environment for rural enterprise

• 79% of Kenyans rely on agriculture for their income

subsistence agriculture produces 75% of total agricultural output

• Support for smallholders in Kenya: Women Enterprise Fund (WEF)

• Many and varied sources of rural credit: microfinance institutions, rural savings and credit cooperatives, community-based organizations and commercial banks

15th - 17th June, 2013

Pauline Ngari

Beyond microfinance – why credit alone is not enough

• Microcredit has inherent limitations…– Focus on profitable groups only – Loan agreements are not always fully understood by borrowers– Many become caught in a spiral of debt and further poverty

• Finance alone is not enough to empower rural women entrepreneurs.

• Teach women how to identify opportunities, how to translate the opportunities into enterprises, how to developed the enterprises and how to sustain those enterprises for wealth creation. And only then will finance make sense to empowering rural women.

• That's the HiH job creation model

15th - 17th June, 2013

Pauline Ngari

Our job creation model: Step 1 - Social Mobilization

‘Meeting together allows us to offer support to one another. We make sure none of us goes to bed without food. Coming together makes life better’.

15th - 17th June, 2013

Women from a self-help group in Kenya

Pauline Ngari

Our job creation model:Step 2 - Business Training

‘In 2009 when we planted, we ate all the produce and were not forward thinking…Our Hand in Hand trainer Ntobe has been so helpful. Now we are not planting only to eat but also to sell and make a profit so that we can expand our garden and our income’.

15th - 17th June, 2013

A rural entrepreneur in South Africa

Pauline Ngari

Our job creation model:Step 3 - Access to Credit

‘I would like to understand how to save and learn more about money because I would like to be able to send my children to school and give them a better future’.

15th - 17th June, 2013

Gulab, a grocer from Rajasthan, India

Pauline Ngari

Our job creation model: Step 4 - Market Linkage

‘Hand in Hand has continued to support me. They helped me find ways of expanding my business and create new things to make and sell’.

15th - 17th June, 2013

Najiba, a bakery owner from northern Afghanistan

Pauline Ngari

Meet Jane, the avocado farmer from Thika near Nairobi, Kenya

• Jane realized that there was a market for her avocados in Nairobi city.

• Working with HiH Eastern Africa staff Jane established a business plan.

• Empowered by her knowledge and her business plan, she took a loan from the group savings fund and used this to employ another person.

• Today, she makes four times her original income and plans to expand and start selling avocado oil.

15th - 17th June, 2013

Our business and job creation model: The results in Kenya

Pauline Ngari15th - 17th June, 2013

Pauline Ngari

OTHER HIH INTERGRATED COMPONENTS

• Enterprise incubation fund to help scale up

• Adult Literacy for functional purposes .e.g..

- business record keeping

- money management

-self esteem improvement

-improved business conceptualization.

• Human Rights particularly for Young vulnerable mothers aimed at freeing their minds from their difficult past life and unleash their entrepreneurial potential for improved livelihoods.

15th - 17th June, 2013

Pauline Ngari

Working in Partnership

• There is power in partnership and critical in particular for development of enterprise for rural women due to their diverse needs.

• To scale up and reach further communities more rapidly, HiH has fostered over 30 strategic partnerships in Kenya.

• For instance, we work in close partnership with the Kenyan government’s Agricultural Sector Development Support Program (ASDSP) under the Ministry of Agriculture among many other areas.

• Hand in Hand provides the ASDSP groups with the business and financial training which combined with technical farming knowledge can unleash entrepreneurial potential.

• New partnerships will enable rapid expansion across the region

15th - 17th June, 2013

Pauline Ngari

Lessons for the International Stage

• Millions of jobless women and rural poor are not the problem.

• Harnessing their business potential is the solution.

• Working in partnership: government, the private sector and NGOs need to work together to unlock rural entrepreneurship.

15th - 17th June, 2013

Dairy owner in Tamil Nadu, India

Pauline Ngari

Thank you for your attention

Pauline Ngari,

CEO Hand in Hand Eastern Africa

Office Tel: +254202660908/9

Cell phone: +254722843299

Email: ngari.pauline@handinhandea.org

www.handinhand-ea.org

15th - 17th June, 2013