Water is Life AND Cows are Life: Water is Life Kenya’s Livestock as a Business Program
Livestock as a Business member spraying cows for disease prevention
Water is Life Kenya’s (WILK) Livestock as Business (LAB) program has been building on indigenous knowledge since 2011, with enormous success. Successful livestock keeping increases family incomes. This allows them to pay for important things, like education and clean water. More reliable incomes make WILK’S water projects more sustainable.
Each year WILK trains and gives microloans to organized trading cooperatives. This combination of training and loans provides an opportunity for the immediate application of new skills. Improved incomes which come through better livestock management and drought resiliency provide positive reinforcement for long-term use of helpful practices like timely livestock disease prevention and control (e.g. vaccinations, deworming, control of ticks), performing simple livestock market surveys, timely buying and selling, budgeting and record keeping, grass conservation and management, among others.
Groups save or reinvest the money they make so that eventually they will no longer require loans from WILK. WILK takes the loans repaid by the groups and reinvests in new groups who are clamoring to join this wildly successful project.
Results: Of 83 loans of $2000 given to groups, 99.5% have been repaid in full. Average net profit per group is over 35%. More than 562 group members and, by example, their extended families and neighbors, have learned valuable skills which directly impact their most valuable family asset, their livestock.
Impact: From these seeds of knowledge and capital, great things are growing. Livestock are healthier, have plenty of water and are well-fed. Through improved management, members see increased value of their livestock, the main family asset, which provides consistent income for food, water supply, shelter and clothing, schooling for children, health and seed money for other small businesses. In addition, farmers are implementing drought management strategies like pasture conservation, preventing their animals from starving during drought.
Each year WILK trains and gives microloans to organized trading cooperatives. This combination of training and loans provides an opportunity for the immediate application of new skills. Improved incomes which come through better livestock management and drought resiliency provide positive reinforcement for long-term use of helpful practices like timely livestock disease prevention and control (e.g. vaccinations, deworming, control of ticks), performing simple livestock market surveys, timely buying and selling, budgeting and record keeping, grass conservation and management, among others.
Groups save or reinvest the money they make so that eventually they will no longer require loans from WILK. WILK takes the loans repaid by the groups and reinvests in new groups who are clamoring to join this wildly successful project.
Results: Of 83 loans of $2000 given to groups, 99.5% have been repaid in full. Average net profit per group is over 35%. More than 562 group members and, by example, their extended families and neighbors, have learned valuable skills which directly impact their most valuable family asset, their livestock.
Impact: From these seeds of knowledge and capital, great things are growing. Livestock are healthier, have plenty of water and are well-fed. Through improved management, members see increased value of their livestock, the main family asset, which provides consistent income for food, water supply, shelter and clothing, schooling for children, health and seed money for other small businesses. In addition, farmers are implementing drought management strategies like pasture conservation, preventing their animals from starving during drought.
|
You can learn more about each group we work with by going here.
Join us today to keep this project growing. We have a waiting list of groups who are ready to join the project as soon as funding is available. |
Click on the photo above to learn more about our Livestock as a Business groups. Pictured here is Joyce Tannian, Co-Founder and Executive Director, with one our 2020 LAB groups after signing their Loan.
|
This video provides an in depth look at our Livestock as a Business program.