When a Project Becomes a Seed

Participants in the 2024 Financial Literacy Program

In my previous blog I reflected on the need for long-term funding and support for those organisations delivering long-term change like the Kenya Union of Hair and Beauty Workers (KUHABWO). In this third blog on my reflections from our 2024 program on financial literacy in Kenya, I focus on another of the organisations we partnered with, Lintons Hair and Beauty Academy in Nairobi. 

I went back to Kenya expecting to revisit the impact of the financial literacy program by reconnecting with the participants . I didn't expect to uncover one of the program's most interesting legacies. But that's exactly what I discovered when I met the team at Lintons Hair and Beauty Academy. 

Lintons was one of the partner academies involved in our 2024 financial literacy program. On this visit I met with Joyce, the Principal; Susan, who had been one of the key contacts during the original programme; Joe, a lecturer who had participated in the training; and Millicent, the new General Manager.

Joe and Susan from Lintons Academy

There were two conversations in our meeting that really caught my attention.

1 Lintons is developing a programme called SOCO, Social Commerce.

The idea is to support students, hairdressers and beauticians, many of whom are single mothers, to develop their businesses while creating a safer and more structured route into selling approved hair and beauty products.

The model is simple but potentially powerful. The women would be supported to promote and sell selected approved products. They would use M-Pesa (the on-line banking and money app used all over Kenya) to improve financial safety and transparency. Lintons would provide ongoing training on using the products alongside business skills development, and the women would receive a 15% profit.

2 We were informed that our financial literacy programme, which included lecturers and college staff, had helped influence the Lintons Foundation's successful application to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation). The resulting program is training 11 women lecturers from hair and beauty colleges and academies all across Kenya in soft skills, including financial, business, technology and gender skills.These 11 women were selected from more than 80 applicants, showing the interest there is in such training. They were selected  because of their experience in the industry and their willingness to cascade the learning to their own students.

Think about those ideas for a moment.

The team at Lintons agreed that the first idea was a direct result of our financial literacy training and that it wasn’t just a business model The second shows that the original financial literacy programme didn't directly train those 11 lecturers. But the team at Lintons agreed that the experience of our financial literacy program helped influence a new programme that is now training lecturers. 

And those lecturers can:

• Take that learning into their classrooms.

• And their students can take it into their salons and businesses.

• And those salons and businesses serve communities across Kenya.

That is what I mean when I talk about the ripple effect of development programs.

It is almost impossible to capture in a conventional project indicator.

You could report:

“11 lecturers trained.” And that would be true. But it would tell only a fraction of the story. The more interesting questions are:

• How many people will those 11 women go on to influence?

• And what will those people do with what they learn?

The six-day training programme at Lintons, running from 24–29 August, was being delivered by an external trainer, Kelvin Irungu, and the intention was not to stop there. Lintons are already looking at a second phase. This is expected to broaden the reach and bring more attention to the soft skills needed by practitioners to modernise the sector, including improving technology skills that can be cascaded down to students. Again, this is about multiplication rather than simple reach.

And there is another reason this matters.

The hair and beauty sector is an enormous part of women's livelihoods.

For many women, particularly single mothers, it offers something that formal employment often doesn't: the ability to earn while working around family responsibilities.

But informal work can also mean financial insecurity, limited access to training, weak social protection and fewer opportunities to build a sustainable business.

So financial literacy isn't an optional “nice to have”. Neither is, Business skills, Digital skills or understanding gender and workplace issues.

They are all part of building economic resilience.

That is why I think we need to stop thinking about programs in silos.

• Financial literacy can lead to business development.

• Business development can lead to greater independence.

• Education can lead to better livelihoods.

• Better livelihoods can strengthen families and communities.

• And women who receive training can become the people who train others.

The original 2024 programme may have been a relatively contained intervention.

But returning to Kenya has proven that its influence didn't stay contained.

It became a seed.

And someone else watered it.

This is why I worry when funding conversations focus too heavily on the number of direct beneficiaries.

Of course, numbers matter.

• We need accountability.

• We need evidence.

• We need to know that money is being used well.

But we also need to ask what happens after the project ends.

• What relationships were created?

• What ideas were sparked?

• What organisations were strengthened?

• Who went on to train others?

• Which programmes were influenced?

• Which opportunities would not otherwise have existed?

Those are harder questions to answer because change takes time and most funding programs don’t allow for resources for long-term measurements of the impact of changes in behaviour. In fairness, some funders do recognise this need for long term engagement, but not enough of them. We need to lobby those funders stuck in the ‘number’ and ‘greater reach’ ruts!

Because sometimes the most successful programme isn't the one that reaches the most people. It's the one that gives people something they can carry forward.