“We started with nothing, and now we are businesswomen!” –PROFIT participant
BOMA just successfully concluded its two-year pilot in Samburu County with the Government of Kenya’s Programme for Rural Outreach of Financial Innovations and Technologies (PROFIT). The pilot was funded by the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), and completed in consultation with BRAC USA. The PROFIT Graduation pilot was designed to test the effectiveness of the Graduation Approach in lifting ultra-poor households out of extreme poverty and the viability of integrating the poverty graduation approach into the government’s social protection systems.
The pilot enrolled 1,600 ultra-poor women in seven wards of Samburu County (Loosuk, Maralal, Porro, Lodokejek, Suguta, Wamba West and Wamba North). BOMA implemented the program with two different iterations (group and individual), providing GoK with the research and impact data needed to adopt the poverty graduation approach as an integral part of the country’s national social protection system. After two years in the program, which included an initial cash transfer, business, financial and life skills training, participants demonstrated significant progress in graduating from extreme poverty, including a 77% increase in average household income and a 1055% increase in savings (see our end line report here).
The pilot concluded with a graduation event in Maralal attended by county and national government representatives including Hon. Nelson Gaichuhie, Chief Administrative Secretary for The National Treasury and Planning, Daniel Tirasi Lesaigor, Chief Officer, Special Programmes for Samburu County, and Stephen Odoti, Maralal Assistant County Commissioner, along with community stakeholders, participants, and teams from BOMA, IFAD and BRAC.