NAME: Margaret Kawira Kagundu
PROJECT: Kiawara Women and Children in Stress Project
DATE: April 2014
My name is Margaret Kawira. I am 36 years old, married and a mother of four children. I live in Witemere slums in Nyeri town. Prior to NCCK micro-credit project in 2005, I used to run a grocery kiosk which brought in very minimal profit, hence as a family we used to survive from hand to mouth. Life was quite difficult because my husband was also unemployed and could not provide for our children’s basic needs like food, shelter, health and education. We had no house and so we lived in a dilapidated single room in the slum. The living conditions were quite poor as there was no water, toilets and electricity and the place was congested.
After the intervention of the project, through the weekly savings I managed the first loan of kshs.2,000/-. We teamed up with my husband and started hawking shoes and men’s clothing. Later on we ventured into dairy goat keeping that was more profitable. The proceeds from business have enabled us to provide food, clothing and education to our children. We also bought a small plot in the slum and put up our own habitable house. Today we have electricity in our house, a toilet and we live a moderate life.
We hope that with the subsequent loans and profits from our businesses, we will be able to get piped water, expand the dairy goat business and buy a plot in the slum and if possible build semi-permanent rental houses.
The major challenges we are facing are poor purchasing power of the community and the current high cost of living, livestock ailments and insecurity. Besides that, raising secondary school fees is a difficult task. I thank NCCK for the support offered through this project. In future, I would appreciate if the amount of loan advanced is increased to at least kshs.80,000/- as this would enable me to have adequate stock of the dairy goats as well as rent a second hand clothes stall for my husband.
