Our Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) model enables participants to gain essential life and money management skills, start their own sustainable businesses, and join savings groups to build resilience to future shocks. With support from mentors, households improve joint decision-making, better school enrollment/attendance, reduced childhood malnutrition and break the multi-generational cycle of poverty.

Africa’s drylands, and its people, are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change despite contributing the least to the problem. The people who call these regions home are facing impacts from prolonged droughts to devastating floods. In response, BOMA is creating a network of climate-conscious entrepreneurs who are committed to protecting and restoring the environment.

For many families in Africa’s drylands, a regular meal can be hard to come by — and a balanced one nearly impossible. As inflation and crises worsen, so does malnutrition. REAP for Nutrition prioritizes the nutrition of children and pregnant or breastfeeding women. Entire households, including men, are engaged in nutrition-centric education and interventions in addition to improvements in livelihood and savings.

Our youth-adapted model is designed to equip young women and men, ages 18-34, with tools and resources needed to build lasting livelihoods. Programs enroll an equal number of men and women and offers enhanced business training, coaching, and business development services. With a condensed 12-month timeline, it serves as a beacon of hope for young people.

Our adapted approach is designed to address the unique and intertwined challenges faced by refugees, displaced persons, returnees, asylum seeks, and host communities living in extreme poverty. By promoting economic and community integration, local representation, and advocacy within government spaces, we are helping to create complementary pathways to resiliency and success.

At the core of BOMA’s work is our goal to reach millions of extreme poor households across the drylands of Africa. To scale our approach, partnership with government is key. By leveraging existing social protection programming and the resources, data, policy, and knowledge of national and local government agencies, we can expand our reach, further adapt our model, and serve a more diverse set of participants.