In pastoral rural communities Maasai women face significant economic challenges, including limited access to formal education and employment. This, combined with the constraints of traditional patriarchal gender roles, mean women often struggle to support their families. Their lack of empowerment perpetuates their marginalisation and dependency on men, making it near impossible to access income to invest in their education, health and overall well-being.
Maasai women are experienced goat rearers, but are not usually given the opportunity to own the goats, as ownership is traditionally reserved for men only.
Funding this project will provide a group of 40 women with 40 healthy goats so they can establish their own herds, and generate income through the sale of goat products, including milk, meat, and offspring.
The goats will undergo veterinary checks and will be tagged for identification and tracking. Women will receive support to help them establish and manage their goat-rearing enterprises successfully.
40 women will establish their own source of income, giving them the power to make choices and invest in education, health and well being for their children, and for themselves.
Goat rearing contributes to household food security and nutrition, promotes social cohesion, and fosters community development.
Each goat represents more than just ownership; it symbolises a pathway to financial security and independence for women in pastoral communities, ultimately creating a more equitable society. As these women prosper and become strong role models for their daughters, their families and communities will benefit both in the short term and for generations to come.
Each Just Peoples project is designed and delivered by a local leader from the country of implementation in collaboration with their local community. All Just Peoples project leaders are part of a global community of 16 leaders who are all tackling poverty in their local communities and share learnings between them.
Semerian Sankori, the Masaai woman who will deliver this project, is a community development expert with over 12 years of experience leading education and social empowerment initiatives for the indigenous Masaai community and adapts and innovates her interventions based on her learnings with each subsequent project delivered.
Those interested in funding this initiative have the opportunity to meet directly with Semerian, via video call. They'll be able to learn more about the local context for Maasai women and determine whether supporting this project will help them meet their goals of contribution.
Following the delivery of this training, the project funder will have the opportunity again to meet directly with Semerian to hear her reflections about the impact that the initiative has had for the women business owners and their wider communities.
We believe in a world without poverty. Where communities have the power to solve their own problems, their own way.
We don’t believe that foreign intervention is the key to solving poverty. We believe that real, sustainable change comes about when people are given the resources to lift their own communities out of poverty. We tackle global poverty by backing grassroots leaders to design and deliver locally appropriate solutions to the challenges their communities face.
Just Peoples currently supports 12 local leaders from across Africa and Asia who are bringing to life a wide-range of projects based on delivering gender-based, health, education, technological, and economic outcomes for people living in poverty. The leaders we support are effective because they have a deep understanding of the local context of poverty in peoples’ lives, and have established respected relationships in their communities. Their insight and expertise make them the best people to understand problems, and implement culturally appropriate solutions that work. So far we have supported 34 local leaders to deliver 202 grassroots projects globally, impacting the lives of over 240,000 people living in poverty.
