Day 28 Kakamega June 5, 2011

Greetings

Today is 28 days or 4 weeks but who is counting?  I have spent the last few days getting to why I came in the first place.  I have done about as much researching as I can online into the NGO process, NGO’s already existing, and other types of groups that provide micro-finance assistance here in Kenya.  We have come to the conclusion that the best way to get funds into the country soon is by partnering with an existing NGO that has something that is already set up. 

There are over 300 NGO’s in Kenya that have micro-finance as one of their objectives.  This does not mean that all of them are providing loans.  In fact I am lead to believe that very few of them do.  I did a search on Kenya’s NGO Co-ordination board for NGO’s in and around Kakamega or the Western Province to select a few organizations to partner with.  Here is their website if anyone wants to help find an NGO for us.

http://www.ngobureau.or.ke/Default.aspx

Go to the database section and you can search by sector and/or district.  There are a boat load of sectors and many districts to which these NGO’s operate.  The sector we are looking at is micro-finance and the districts are the towns in the Western Province, Rift Valley, or Northern Kenya.  Busia, Bungoma, Kakamega, Mumias, Eldoret, Kisumu, Kitale, Webuye, Nandi hills, to name a few. 

There are about 60 NGO’s that are operating in and around Kakamega that have micro-finance as one of their objectives.  I wanted to make sure that their operating range covered the area and could reach back to Nairobi and up to Maralal if possible.  I did not see much happening in the area of micro-finance in Maralal.  I was able to pick 12 possible NGO’s that could help us.  Out of the 12 only 10 had email addresses and I wrote them all today.  The other two I plan to call.   

I am still going to go through as many of the other 300 or so to see if there is a better fit for us.  In the mean time I will wait to hear back from those that I have already contacted and hopefully we can find someone to partner with.  Right now this is our first priority to find an NGO with micro-finance capabilities to get funds into the country to help with these projects.  So the next 3 weeks will be in and around Western Kenya or Nairobi to find an NGO to partner with.  In three weeks time I am scheduled to go to Maralal to help with Ken and Susan Black’s ministry. 

We are already working on a couple of small projects and tomorrow Hezron and I are going back to the passion fruit plot to see how it is coming along.  Hopefully tomorrow the first plowing will be done and we can start to add nutrients into the ground before the second plowing a week from tomorrow.

Take care and Branden if you are reading this happy birthday.

Dave