Knowledge Equippin To Foster Community Based Organization Sustainability

Anglican development services Eastern has been implementing the Livelihoods Improvement Project with the Kyumbuke CBO in Kyua Location in Machakos County. The goal being to improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable communities, making them more resilient to the effects of climate change and strengthening community institutions in Machakos (Kyua) and Makueni (Kiangini) counties.

The Kyumbuke farmers from the Kyumbuke Community based Organization held an exchange visit to the Kitise Rural Development; a Community Based Organization (CBO) comprising of over 60 self-help groups and operating in Makueni County that was started by community members in 2005 to address the problem of water scarcity but later expanded its mandate to address other key sectors in development for example; health and livelihoods.

With the project in the last year of its implementation, the focus of the exchange visit was to learn more on how they can be able to sustain themselves even when the project phases out and the Kitise Rural Development was the go-to as it has remained operational even after the project ended. The CBO has been successful in sustaining itself through aggregation of green grams, grass bailing and milk which they do value addition to make yoghurt and fermented milk. They aggregate the products from the farmers thus help to provide market to the drought tolerant crops the farmers produce from the trainings they undertake whilst aggregating the green grams and grass makes marketing easy.  Farmers from Kyumbuke selected the green grams, grain amaranth and grass value which do well even with minimal rainfall and were able to learn on how they will be able to aggregate and sell their produce together.

The Kiteei bee keepers from Kiangini CBO Self Help group had an exchange learning visit to Kamaki farmers’ Cooperative in Miangeni with the main objective being to learn on how to upscale their production and marketing strategies. The Kamakis main value chain is honey production.

Additionally, farmers from CBO farmers Kitungati, Kibauni and Kanthuni CBO attended a learning exercise at the Kalro Kiboko – an institute that was established to address challenges in dry lands and with its goal being to develop technologies for re-vegetation and restoration of degraded rangelands and enhance dry land farming. The farmers learned on economic analysis of livestock keeping, pasture establishment and suitability of pasture establishment.