• Kenya
  • Resources
  • Capacity Building
  • Financial Literacy
  • Financial Literacy

Key highlights

According to the Global index report

  • women in the developing nations, such as Kenya, have a 20% less likelihood of owning a bank account in a formal financial institution.
  • 17% less likely to formally borrow money, deficiency in their financial literacy is one of the causes

Why Financial literacy?

Financial literacy is important to women entrepreneurs as it provides them with knowledge on:

  • valuing money;
  •  spending it;
  • keeping track on spending through updated records;
  • saving for the future and;
  •  investing in productive and sustainable activities.

                                                                                                Read more

What is the situation in Kenya?

Existing statistics show that lack of financial illiteracy among women:

  • Remains a major hindrance to their economic empowerment.
  • Makes it hard for women to navigate and use financial services, and
  • Leads to inappropriate financial decisions
  • Exposes women to added risk by borrowing from informal sources, saving too little, and failing to access appropriate financial services.

Various organization and institutions in Kenya have established financial literacy programmes for women entrepreneurs.

 

angle-left CARE International Kenya

CARE International Kenya

Institution

 

 

 

CARE was founded in USA in 1945 to provide aid to those who had been victims of World War II in Europe. It commenced its humanitarian assistance to the Kenyan public in 1968, under the auspices of the CARE USA. Its Operations in Kenya are in  Bungoma, Busia, Embu, Garissa,  Homabay, Kajiado,  Kakamega, Kirinyaga, Kisii, Kisumu, Kitui, Marsabit, Migori,Nairobi, Nyandarua, Nyanza, Nyeri,Siaya, Trans Nzoia, Vihiga counties in Kenya.

 

Financial Literacy Programme

CARE Kenya’s Women and Girls Economic Empowerment program’s mission is to promote positive change by providing opportunities and pathway for women and girls to access and take control of productive assets. This is to enable them to become financially included and engage them in economic empowerment initiatives to address needs of chronic livelihood of insecure women constrained by lack of access to and control over productive assets, basic services and denial of rights living in urban informal and rural settings.

CARE Kenya builds on the network of CAREs Group Savings and Loans (GS&L) to bring on board range of economic empowerment “interventions that include: Financial Education/Literacy, Rural Sales Agents, Micro enterprise development, Linkages to formal financial institutions, Market engagement and Poverty Graduation Models”. Read more

Cost of training

The training is free of charge and covers savings and credit products, processes and delivery channels including mobile technology.

The beneficiaries are drawn from the zones characterized by extreme poverty, vulnerability, marginalization and exclusion.

Duration

N/A

Other initiatives beneficial to women

Link Up Kenya
This project is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and builds on the GS&L platform through CARE’s strategy for financial inclusion to elevate excluded individuals into the financial system.Through partnership with Equity Bank and Kenya Commercial Bank the project is expected to link over 6,000 Savings and Loans groups with 125,000 individual members to formal financial institutions for the access of the savings product.

 

The Program for Rural Outreach of Financial Innovations and Technologies (PROFIT) Graduation
This is a pilot project funded by Government of Kenya (GOK) in partnership with the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD). It's aimed to address the endemic poverty levels in targeted zones of Kitui County, working with 1,000 beneficiary households.

 

Kenya Rural Sales
This project has reached over 24,000 women that promote various health products amongst other women in Group Savings and Loans groups, making income for themselves and passing a cost saving share to their counterpart women end users. Rural sales will provide rare economic opportunities and dignified self-employment at the bottom populations thereby strengthening women access to resources.


Creating a Digital Credit Profile for Informal Savings Groups (VISA) Project
CARE Kenya is leveraging on data obtained from its own over 100 Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) groups to create a digital credit profile then taken through e-recording for adoption. The groups are linked to Kenya Commercial Bank. This project's mission is to develop credit models for banks to provide credit to savings groups with greater understanding of the risks and opportunities in that market.

 

Financial Graduation
This pilot project adapts the graduation model steps of ultra-poor targeting, provision of skills training, asset transfer in terms of credit and consumption support. The project is supported by Financial Sector Deepening Trust Kenya (FSD-K) and targets 1,200 participants, about 92% of them being women. The project in partnership with Equity Bank is developing a credit product for this category of people who are traditionally left out of the lending regime due to high risk.

Read more

Contacts

CARE International in Kenya
Mucai Drive, Off Ngong Road
P. O. Box 43864-00100
Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: +254 020 258538/2/3
Email:info@care.or.ke
www.care.or.ke
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