Jitokeze Wamama Wafrika seeks to empower marginalized and vulnerable girls and women in West Pokot Kenya to overcome poverty and improve their resilience to the impacts of climate change as well as contribute to building sustainable communities where they dwell.
What is Jitokeze
Jitokeze Wamama Wafrika is a community-based organization in West Pokot County in the North Western region of Kenya. Jitokeze is committed to empowering marginalized women and girls in West Pokot through training and support on skills needed for establishing sustainable livelihoods, as well as building sustainable communities where women’s rights and capacities are honored and celebrated and through them families, villages and nations are transformed.
Jitokeze’s work is supported by Covenant World Relief and their partner Growing Hope Globally.
Who does Jitokeze serve?
Jitokeze serves marginalized girls who have suffered harmful cultural practices like female genital mutilation (FGM), early marriages, and others denied access to education just because they were born girls.
These practices lock girls and their children in the cycle of poverty and make them highly vulnerable to harsh realities like food insecurity, violence, and unemployment.
The Work of Jitokeze
Sharing the Harvest is a community of people who believe in the power of generosity and sharing. No one embodies that better than the farmers on both sides of the ocean who work to grow our food and better the communities they call home. Take some time and meet some of the farmers from Kenya.
Self-Help Groups
These small sustainable investment groups, made-up of mostly women and girls, who pool their own resources to lend to one another to start farming and small businesses. They are empowering each other through their own resources. Jitokeze supplies the training and support for such groups to exist and flourish.
Tailoring Programs
These residential tailoring programs provide training in tailoring and running a small business for these young women to return to their villages and support their families through a valuable trade. Some of the items they have made have been for sale at the Sharing the Harvest Packing Day. This program also includes training in life skills, literacy, and entrepreneurship.
Peacebuilding
The Self-Help Groups have at their core relationship, as it is about much more than a small lending organization. These groups create an environment where peacebuilding can occur between individuals, families, and tribes, who are working together towards a common goal.
Creation Care
Each of Jitokeze’s program has an emphasis on climate change, as West Pokot County experiences its effects. They do this through education on a local and international level. They also have an emphasis on planting trees in the communities that they work in.