Community Outreach: Incentive Worker Spotlight
Sarah is a 42-year-old refugee woman from the Congo. She came to Kenya in 2005 and now lives with her husband and three children in the Kivuli community of Nairobi. Sarah has been a member of RefuSHE’s Women’s Ambassador Group in Kivuli since its founding in 2013. The group started with just a few women interested in building a savings group. Today, the group has 33 members who, year-after-year, pay registration fees, loan money to each other, and work together to solve community challenges.
RefuSHE partners with Women’s Ambassador Groups (WAGs) like Sarah’s by offering trainings on financial literacy, stress management, and sexual and gender-based violence, as well as providing small business loans that WAGs members return monthly with interest.
“RefuSHE has helped us better our businesses,” says Sarah. “They loan us money as a group, but they also help individually boost our livelihoods.”
Sarah says that the number one reason people join WAGs is because women are able to “relieve stress by being together and talking about their issues and supporting each other.”
“We are from different countries like Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi,” says Sarah. “So interacting with each other helps us change our minds and ideas. If we have a problem, we share the problem. A problem shared is a problem half-solved. Even if we don’t have the money, we sit together as women and find it in ourselves to help each woman. Our group is stronger because of that.”
For many refugee women in Nairobi looking to start their own businesses or support their families, there is no tangible path to accessing a loan. But in a “chama” or group, the women have an established reputation and can borrow money more easily from each other and financial institutions.
Sarah’s husband has an electronic repair business. If he needs to borrow money to support his business, Sarah is able to get a loan from her WAGs group. This is one of the ways that the WAGs help empower women and their wider communities. Rather than relying on their husbands for financial support, women can run their own businesses or receive loans to support the family business.
“Since RefuSHE has invested in the WAGs, women have begun to boost their businesses. Even with inflation, women have increased their savings,” says Sarah. “The groups help women to be independent.”
Like all the WAGs RefuSHE supports, Sarah’s group is run by a committee of elected members. However, when it comes to decision-making, the whole group weighs in and votes. RefuSHE’s community-based Incentive Workers also play a role in supporting WAGs decision-making and resolving community conflict.
Since 2020, Sarah has served as an Incentive Worker for RefuSHE on behalf of her Women’s Ambassador Group. In her expanded role, Sarah acts as a liaison between RefuSHE and the broader Kivuli community. As a leader embedded in the community where she works, Sarah is best equipped to identify and help resolve conflicts. She also helps connect refugee girls in need of services to RefuSHE and encourages women from the community to join the WAGs group.
“We have a responsibility to each other as refugees,” says Sarah. “We have shared experiences that encourage us to help each other.”