The Slovak civic association Dvojfarebný svet in Eldoret is implementing a development project, supported by the SlovakAid grant scheme. Through training courses and a stay in a business incubator, it supports local women from marginalized environments. The project coordinator, Zuzana Kralinská, supervises the implementation and documentation of project activities and results in the field. The number of participants is not small.

Photo: Maria Muhl - Students of the knitting course

Zuzana Kralinská, while still a student of missionary and charitable work at VŠ zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Alžbety, visited Rwanda in 2014 as a development volunteer. A few years later she traveled to Kenya for a three-month internship. But the three-month stay eventually became a two-year stay. She is currently coordinating in Eldoret a project called “Support for the independence and economic self-reliance of disadvantaged women from the Langas slum,” funded with support from the Slovak Republic. The local partner of the project is Detský domov pre dievčatá Sv. Bakhity.
Support for disadvantaged women from the Langas slum

The coordinator explains why the NGO Dvojfarebný svet carries out a development cooperation project there: “Eldoret is the fifth-largest city in Kenya and is continuously growing. It is exactly this high level of urbanization that leads to a continually increasing population in slum areas. The Langas slum is estimated to have around four hundred thousand residents. Population growth does not, however, match the pace of job growth, which results in a high level of unemployment and poverty, creating a vicious cycle. That is why Slovak doctors and logistics staff from VŠ sv. Alžbety have worked there for a long time. When local women learned that a Slovak-Kenyan project was operating there that taught practical skills to young girls, they came to the then coordinator asking for a training center also for older women. The organization Dvojfarebný svet responded to this request, and work on its implementation began.”

The organization Dvojfarebný svet has been working over the long term to strengthen women’s position in slum areas. This time, it decided to support local women from marginalized environments by offering six-month training courses and a monthly computer course. Some families’ weak social circumstances do not allow all their children to attend secondary schools. Insufficient education then leads to difficulties in finding employment, early pregnancy, and problems with supporting a family. This is precisely the women for whom this project provides the opportunity to learn a craft and acquire business skills.

Students can attend a six-month course in hairdressing, tailoring, and knitting at the center. For women in socially vulnerable situations, and also men with disabilities, the organization also runs a monthly computer-skills course. “At the end of the course, graduates receive a starter package, which consists of materials and tools needed to launch their own business. In this way they become economically independent and able to provide for their families even if their partners are absent or unable to do so,” summarizes the project’s impact on local women, said Zuzana Kralinská.

Whereas graduates of the hairdressing course are able to start operating immediately after completion, graduates of the tailoring and knitting courses have difficulties with this. This is mainly due to insufficient capital and a lack of entrepreneurial skills. That is why, since 2016, the NGO Dvojfarebný svet has also been running in the local center a social enterprise, a so-called business incubator, where it employs the relevant graduates for five months so they can improve or acquire entrepreneurial skills. All of them highly praise the business incubator.

Sustainability and replication of the project

The field worker adds that “the project still requires follow-up activities and especially time for results to become sufficiently visible and for sustainability to be measurable. We are currently preparing a continuation, i.e., the next phase of the project, and if we obtain a grant from MZVaEZ SR, after two years the project should already be self-sustaining.”

In future, members of the NGO Dvojfarebný svet would like to rework and expand the project into an accredited training and vocational center under the state TVET institution, with the possibility of a national exam for its students. Thanks to this, after finishing their studies they would hold a nationally recognized certificate with which they could continue to a higher level of education or more easily find employment—anywhere in Kenya. At the same time, they also want to focus on women whose lives have been affected by disability, whether the women are people with physical disabilities themselves, or caregivers for someone with a health impairment.

Zuzana describes the project’s success in important numbers: “for us, the most valuable result is roughly one thousand two hundred graduates, mainly women graduates of our courses, and the provision of school uniforms for a thousand children in the Langas slum.”

Text: Boba Markovič Baluchová Photo: archive of Zuzana Kralinská and Maria Muhl for OZ Dvojfarebný svet