REAP is an innovative poverty-graduation program that offers business-skills training, a start-up grant and two years of mentoring to small business groups of three women. In 2011, BOMA added a micro-savings component that teaches participants the importance of savings, facilitates access to secure savings instruments (such as three-lock boxes and mobile banking, where available), and helps REAP business groups to establish mentored savings and loans associations.
The numbers, as REAP enters its fifth year, are impressive. BOMA has launched 1,145 income-generating businesses in 20 settled villages and more than 250 nomadic villages across Northern Kenya. These business groups comprise 3,963 adults, who use the income and savings to support more than 19,800 children. This total includes 177 savings groups, each made up of between three to eight REAP business groups. Guided by an established constitution and lending guidelines, the savings groups offer interest-bearing loans to REAP participants and trusted community members, often serving as the first-and only-source of cash and credit in these remote villages.
"I am proud of how far we have come and how hard the BOMA team and our participants have worked to get us here," said BOMA founder and Vermont
The BOMA Project is a Vermont-based nonprofit and registered Kenyan NGO that helps poor women start small, sustainable businesses in their rural villages in Northern Kenya. BOMA has a proven track record, gets measurable results and has a transformative approach to alleviating poverty, empowering women and building resiliency in the arid lands of rural Africa.
For more information on The BOMA Project, go to www.bomaproject.org or call 802-231-2542.
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