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Growing up in a poor family in rural Kenya, Jennifer witnessed firsthand the societal mistreatment of girls: “I watched my mom and different girls within the village function as donkeys. They might stick with it their backs firewood, bananas, a bag of different stuff and a child. I noticed them get abused, crushed and work 24 hours a day,” she mentioned in an interview. Schooling was her escape. She did properly sufficient to be positioned on the prestigious Treasured Blood Excessive College in Nairobi as a youngster and has by no means regarded again. As a substitute, she has reached out a hand to assist girls and women who have been similar to her as soon as.
After Jennifer graduated from College of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, she pursued extra research within the UK on the College of Leeds. Then Jennifer returned to Kenya to finish her PhD at Kenyatta College. Her thesis matter—girls, schooling and growth—may be seen as a peek into her future, however earlier than she turned an advocate for ladies’s financial empowerment, Jennifer taught on the college for ten years. It was solely after a stint within the United Nations that she took a full step into the world that now holds her in such excessive esteem.
In 1991, Kenya Girls Finance Belief (KWFT), the precursor to at this time’s Kenya Girls Microfinance Financial institution (KWMB), a subsidiary of Kenya Girls Holding, was in a troubled state. Based in 1981 below the auspices of Mary Okelo, the primary African girl supervisor at Barclays Financial institution in Kenya, KWFT was set as much as tackle the monetary wants of girls as a lady serving, girl led financial institution. Ten years on nevertheless, KWFT was bleeding cash on the price of $300,000 a 12 months. Regardless of her lack of expertise within the monetary trade, Jennifer bravely took the helm and sought schooling, assist and recommendation from these round her. In an interview with Monetary Occasions, Jennifer confided: “I used to be the mortgage officer; I used to be the accountant; I used to be the auditor; I used to be all the things. However I knew what poverty means; I knew what starvation means; I knew these girls.” This fearless dive into the unknown paid off. A few years later, KWFT emerged as a mannequin microfinance establishment, one that’s dead-on in reaching its mission, offering 900,000 girls with monetary merchandise similar to loans, financial savings and insurance coverage.
Particularly in instances of disaster, management may be the deciding consider whether or not an organization, or a trigger, can survive. However opposite to the imaginative and prescient of a pacesetter as a single particular person rallying followers from on excessive, Jennifer’s thought is that this: “I wish to work with folks as a result of I imagine that I can’t do it alone.” Jennifer additionally believes that “Folks shouldn’t develop into leaders to allow them to be worshipped by the folks, however in order that they’ll really serve the folks with dedication and with sincerity.”
With regards to her place as chief in an trade dominated by males, Jennifer’s place is evident: “I’m huge into girls’s management. Now we have acquired to have leaders to run these establishments and we’d like girls to run them.” However, she admits that even at KWFT, girls usually drop out of the race for management on the center administration stage. She worries that ladies don’t need management positions as a result of they’ve so many different priorities, significantly of their mid to late 30s when many are married with their first youngsters. “We’re very acutely aware of this and we attempt to push them up the ladder, however it isn’t at all times doable.”
“…the girl is the core. She holds us up. It’s important to assist girls, if we wish to make a distinction.”
In response to this, KWMB conducts management coaching to establish and develop girls leaders. In reality, KWMB (then often known as KWFT) gained the primary Girls’s World Banking Excellence in Management Award launched in 2011. The award acknowledges the “role-model” establishment within the community that exemplifies each excellence in girls management and excellence in efficiency. However, coaching is only one piece of the puzzle; mentorship is the opposite. “Girls must see that it may be finished,” she mentioned. “My definition of mentors is individuals who will get girls to maneuver to the subsequent stage. It isn’t those who say ‘be good and be good,’ no. No matter it takes to maneuver you to the subsequent stage, take it.” She additionally believes that mentorship, like every good marketing strategy, must be structured and finished in ranges. “Mentorship is a gradual course of,” she admits, even perhaps slower for ladies being mentored into management roles as a result of they are going to be breaking the limitations of tradition and the ladders of custom on the identical time.
Nonetheless, the trail to girls’s management is evident for Jennifer: With mentorship, assist, publicity and visibility “we may have robust girls leaders,” she says.
With a lot achieved, what has saved the indefatigable Jennifer Riria going? Easy. It’s the perception that “the girl is the core. She holds us up. It’s important to assist girls, if we wish to make a distinction.”
Additional Studying:
Interview with CNBC Africa “Girls on Wealth” Nov 26, 2014
Inspirational success story for entrepreneurs: a biography of Jennifer Riria by Maramentor
Small loans, huge ambition an interview with the Monetary Occasions Jun 6 2014
Why Microfinance and Girls? A speech at Girls’s World Banking
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