23 funded
Economic Empowerment
Financial literacy, business mentorship and start-up capital for young women.
The problem
She did not choose to leave.
Every barrier below is structural. None of them are about how much a young mother wants to learn.
Income is not a single decision. It is a stack of them: what can be sold, who can be lent to, whether a phone is worth buying, whether the market opens before the savings do.
Most financial literacy programmes teach budgeting to women who already have something to budget. Ours starts earlier. Financial literacy, then business mentorship from someone who has actually run something, then start-up capital without a collateral requirement that would rule out the people most likely to benefit from it.
The measure is not how many businesses were funded. It is how many are still trading a year later.
What we do
What economic empowerment actually involves
Financial literacy
Savings, credit and mobile money, taught by women running businesses in the same estate.
Business mentorship
A matched mentor with a trading business, for the practical questions a syllabus cannot answer.
Start-up capital
Granted without collateral, which is what excludes the people most likely to need it.
Market linkage
Introduction to buyers and cooperatives, because a product with no route to a customer is not income.
Peer network
A cohort that keeps trading together, so the first year is not solved alone.
Business survival
We measure how many are still trading at twelve months. Not how many were funded.
What it has produced
Every figure below carries the period it covers.
- young mothers returned to school2025–26
- 19
- young women given start-up capital2025–26
- 23
- safe space, Dada Space, Kiberasince 2024
- 1
In their words
What changed
What it costs
KSh 250,000 funds a full term of Dada Space
- KSh 500
- school materials for one girl for one term
- KSh 2,500 / month
- psychosocial support for one young mother
- KSh 10,000
- a share of start-up capital for one young woman
- KSh 50,000
- a full re-entry package for one girl
Fund a re-entry
Fees, materials, a year of mentorship and follow-through. Paid directly to the school, tracked to completion.
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Where we work