The Olkilorit Project
The Maasai in the Olkilorit region of Kenya have, traditionally, lived nomadic lifestyles with huge herds of cattle. In the last two decades, they’ve faced the dual challenges of global warming and modernization, with the land they’ve lived on being deeded to individual Maasai and the nomadic lifestyle becoming impossible.
Ever a resilient and creative people, the Maasai got jobs as guard for tourists on safari. They learned to farm bees and sell the honey to resorts, and make traditionally beaded jewelry for tourists. Relying on a keen sense of business, they’ve kept their families and culture alive.
Covid has hit this region incredibly hard. So many of the businesses in the region are tourism based—and tourism has all but disappeared. While North Americans are struggling with loneliness and frustration, these families are struggling to put food on the table.
Flaming Chalice International has worked with the women of the Olikilorit region in the past, through the Oltumo project, and so they approached us with a request to start a microloans program in the community. This would allow several families to start small businesses that are not tourism based, selling essentials like clothes and shoes to locals. The group is planning to take the loans, as they’re repaid, and put them back into the community so that family after family is helped—with decisions about who is helped next resting with the local council.
They are asking for 3000 Canadian (around 2500 USD) as seed money for that fund—which will fund the ideas for eleven different families in that area, and then will later be used to fund even more.
We know that solutions that come from the local people and are managed by them—particularly by groups of local women—have the most impact. We have seen these women implement innovative solutions before, and their ideas were succeeding before Covid hit.
We say that we are “all in the same boat” with this pandemic, but the truth is we are all in the same storm. Our boats are very different, and some of us are left more vulnerable than others. For the women of Olkilorit, the struggle is to put food in the mouths of their families. You can help them weather this storm.