LEADERSHIP
The Regional Program Managers (RPM’s) each oversee their region of 6-11 women’s groups. In this role, they directly support each group leader and work with the groups to help determine their primary problems, set goals and objectives, and decide what income generating activities will help them reach their financial targets.
Women teach one another new income-generating skills through peer-to-peer relationships, such as: tie-dying cloth, making soap, drip irrigation gardening, and making bags, purses, and ropes from the sisal plant. Leadership development and training is done monthly in the groups by the RPMs. The group members learn about good hygiene, nutrition, how to save and manage their own money, accurate bookkeeping, group saving methods such at Table Banking, marriage and family guidance, and how to lead a group meeting.
Read These Stories of Leadership
Learning to Lead
Meet Stella Kimeu, a 47-year-old widow and a mother of five who has earned respect and admiration from her church and community for her exemplary leadership qualities. Mrs. Kimeu is a farmer and the chairlady of Itulu Women’s Group under Path From Poverty program. Though slightly-built, Kimeu has proven to be a strong woman of faith, a decisive leader and a tough mother. She has served her group of 30 women for five years now. In that duration, they managed to save money together to purchase 22 plastic water tanks and received four more tanks as gifts of appreciation from Path From Poverty for their hard work.
Kimeu completed her primary school education in 1984. Her poor parents could not afford to take her to secondary school. Instead, she joined a local middle-level college for a two-year course in dressmaking. She later got married and started a tailoring kiosk in her village. “I lost my husband through a grisly road accident and that’s when my life changed. Shortly after his death, my sewing machine broke down. I turned to farming to raise my three boys and two beautiful girls,” Kimeu opened up.
Persistent droughts and poor farm yields made things difficult for Kimeu and her family. Every evening after school, her children walked six kilometers to the nearest river to fetch water and that affected their performance in school. When Kimeu learned about other Path From Poverty groups and how women’s lives were being transformed, she mobilized her neighbors and after months of orientation and training, they started their own group in 2011. “When we started, I never expected the women to appoint me as their leader. I almost turned down their request because I honestly felt inferior. I was a widow struggling to feed my children and I couldn’t understand why they chose me considering we had happily married women in the group, with better education and income,” Kimeu remembered with nostalgia.
She felt that the women chose her partly because of her leadership role in her local African Inland Church (AIC). After she lost her husband, she started counseling other widows in church. However, this role was not as demanding compared to leading a group of 30 women struggling to save their hard-earned money to buy a water tank. Stella says, “I have faced major challenges as a leader but I have always prayed to God for his guidance. My group has also been very supportive and encouraging. Villagers, including husbands of some of my members, walk up to me and shake my hand for a job well done. I have seen lives transform and I know for sure that we serve a living God through this work." Kimeu said that her leadership role has also given her strength to raise teenage boys without a father figure. “Community leaders and headteachers speak highly of me and that has contributed to my teenage boys respecting me as a single parent.”
Shining Star
Hellen Syokau was 13 years old living in the Mbooni region of Kenya with her two sisters when several members of Path From Poverty’s Ngoonzeo Women’s Group met her. Both of their parents had recently died– her mother of cerebral Malaria, and her father of a heart attack, there was no guardian caring for them. Hellen had been taking care of her two younger sisters as best she could, but they were still at risk of exploitation, early marriage, starvation and continuing the cycle of poverty. Hellen and her sister’s future was unpredictable with no hope of an education, proper nutrition or health care.
Her life took a major turn when the Ngoonzeo Women’s Group embraced her and her sisters by visiting them consistently, and pulling together and hiring a woman to provide daily meals and care for the girls. Upon hearing of Ngoonzeo’s extreme generosity and faithfulness to the least of these, Path From Poverty partnered with them by supporting the education of Hellen, who was beginning Secondary School (the equivalent of high school, but this level of schooling is not free in Kenya).
Since 2014, Hellen has received a proper education and support. She has thrived with the support of the Ngoonzeo Women’s Group members. In 2015, the group even joined together to buy a small water tank for the family. Because Ngoonzeo members looked beyond themselves and cared for their community members together, they have started a wave of change which allowed Helen to attend secondary school and provide her the opportunity to walk a hopeful path. They chose to put an orphan girl’s needs above their own and have shown all of us the true meaning of selflessness.
Today Hellen is a beautiful teenager, is living with dignity and pride as she graduates from Secondary School and will be receiving her Kenyan Certificate of Education. Because of the power of women coming together to work for the good of not only their own families but their greater community as well, lives are being changed. The partnership of Path From Poverty with Women’s Groups is a beautiful and powerful force of good.
Hellen has proven to be a hard-working, bright student who has shown immense gratitude to her supporters. We received a sweet letter from her recently and it read “I am grateful to all of the people in the US that have helped me and my sisters, may God bless you." Helen is a shining star and a perfect example of what Path From Poverty is all about – helping women bring themselves out of poverty.