She Became a Changemaker
This is my fourth blog on my reflections on my return to Kenya, and being able to revisit partners and participants of our 2024 financial literacy program. Sometimes the best evidence that a programme has worked isn't found in a monitoring spreadsheet. It's found in a room full of women.
I'd like to introduce you to Jane.
Jane had been a participant in our 2024 financial literacy programme.
This time, I visited her at Bura Bura Library, around 45 minutes from central Nairobi.
She wasn't there to receive training.
She was delivering it.
From 3–31 August, Jane was running a programme for ten women who were caring for children with neurodivergent conditions and cerebral palsy. There were eight mothers and two carers. The women were learning hairdressing and massage as well as digital soft skills.
But this wasn't simply a vocational training course. The purpose was much more fundamental. These women needed ways to earn an income while still being able to care for their children. Learning hairdressing meant they could potentially work from home. It meant developing a livelihood around their caring responsibilities rather than having to choose between the two.
And Jane was making that possible but she hadn't done this alone.
In 2021, Jane and another Kenya Union of Hair and Beauty Workers (KUHABWO) member, Anna Karume, established MUWWA — Metropolitan Urembo Wasusi Wapambaji Association (Metropolitan Beauty, Braiding and Makeup Association). The organisation works across the outlying areas of Nairobi and is affiliated with KUHABWO. This year MUWWA partnered with the Creche Foundation, and with support from donations and resources from companies such as, FGB Solutions, House of Esther and the National Library, they set up this training opportunity. And now ten women were sitting in a library learning skills that could help them build an income.
When Jane talked about how she had got to this point, she made a connection that stayed with me. She said that the financial literacy programme gave her the courage and skills to push for this program and these engagements.
That sentence says so much about what financial literacy programs can really be about. We sometimes reduce financial literacy to budgets, savings, banking and money management. Those things matter. But knowledge can also create confidence.
And confidence can create action.
Jane took what she learned and used it to build relationships, seek opportunities and create something for other women. That is the ripple effect.
And it is why I find some traditional measures of program success so frustrating.
If you looked only at our original financial literacy programme, Jane would have appeared in the data as one participant.
One person trained.
One number.
But that number doesn't tell you that she went on to strengthen the association.
It doesn't tell you that she helped create opportunities for other women.
It doesn't tell you that she is now delivering training.
It doesn't tell you about the ten women sitting in Bura Bura Library.
And it certainly doesn't tell you about what those ten women might do next.
Perhaps one will establish a home-based business.
Perhaps another will employ someone.
Perhaps another will teach her daughter.
Perhaps another will become a trainer herself.
Those outcomes may happen months or years after the original programme has officially finished. They are almost impossible to attribute neatly. But does that mean they aren't impactful? I don't think so.
In fact, I think this is one of the biggest challenges facing funders and organisations working on women's economic empowerment. We have become very good at short-term interventions and counting.
How many participants?
How many sessions?
How many trainers?
How many communities?
How many women?
These numbers are important.
But they are only the beginning of the story.
We also need to ask:
What did those women do with the opportunity?
Jane's story is one answer. She used it. She built something. And then she created opportunities for others.
Another ripple. One idea leading to another opportunity. One program participant connecting people and organisations that might otherwise never have met. This is what sustainable impact can look like.
It isn't always a dramatic headline.
Sometimes it's a woman sitting in a library on a weekday morning, learning a new skill because she wants to create a livelihood that works around caring for her child.
Sometimes it is the person who was once sitting at the back of the training room now standing at the front. And sometimes it is recognising that the program you designed years ago and which a funder funded is still moving through people's lives in ways you never predicted.
Jane reminded me why we need to invest not just in reaching women, but in connecting to what happens after we reach them.
Give women knowledge.
Give them confidence.
Give them opportunity.
And then watch what they do with it.
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