(I wrote this a while back, but it took some time to finalize…)

For centuries, the Maasai people have kept to their traditions: The men hunt, herd cattle, protect their community and do lots of other out-door work. The women build shelter, prepare food, look after the children, and these days grow and sell crops. After all this effort, their husbands collect, keep and spend all of the money that their wives make.

This cycle leaves the Maasai women with no money to buy clothes, soap or anything else. Often, when the women ask their husbands for some money, their husbands refuse to and they solve their problems by beating their wives. For so long, Maasai women have had little resources to sustain themselves and their children.

This has been an enormous problem, up until very recently.

World Vision is working with the Maasai women to help them earn their own money. Instead of relying on their husbands, World Vision is teaching the women about how to farm, how they can make their own money, and use it wisely. To do this, they are teaching women to form Savings Groups.

A savings group is basically a community bank. All the women in the village spend months digging water pans, which collect water for watering their plants. Then, the women grow all kinds of different vegetation, using the water pans. Finally, they are able to sell some of their crops to make money.

After a month, the Savings Group members gather together in a meeting. In this meeting, they all put the money they’ve earned into a lock-box to keep it safe. The leader of the group then asks who has a reason to borrow money from the “bank.” The person with the most urgent need is given a limited amount of money to use that month. The more money that you make and contribute to the lock-box, the more money you can withdraw from it.

At the end of a cycle (8 months) the remaining amount of money in the lock-box is divided up among the members of the group.

This is an effective way to earn money, organize it, and use it conservatively. And, it is also a good way to benefit the entire community, instead of just one person.

There are also other ways for the Maasai women to earn money, instead of just farming. We met a group of women who had started up a beading business. World Vision built them a shop to sell all of their creations. The idea was that they would work together to bead bracelets, necklaces, anklets, Maasai staffs and headwear, beaded toys and other types of various trinkets. Their jewelry stand was by the main road that tourists pass on the way to Terengerie National Park, and they hoped that people might be interested in shopping for traditional Maasai souvenirs.

They saved up their money, and divided it up like the other Savings Groups.

When we interviewed some of these women and asked them what they wanted to do with their money once they had saved up enough, we received a lot of heartwarming answers:

• One lady wanted to buy bricks and stones so she could finally build a house for herself and her children. Some Maasai families have so many wives that they don’t all fit in one round hut, so the women get one hut to share with their children, and their husbands get a larger, rectangular house to themselves.
• Another lady said that she would like to buy the materials to start a vegetable farm of her own.
• Some people agreed that they wanted to send their children to school, so they could have a better life when they grew up. This was against most Maasai traditions because most Maasai children spent their entire childhood herding cows and goats so they could eat. The husbands never used their money to educate their kids, so the women decided to take it into their hands.
• Other people wanted to buy beads, vegetables, clothes, soap, books and other items that they never would have been able to own if not for the Savings Groups.

Now women in villages have grown stronger, and are able to support themselves. They have a bigger impact on society, and in their own families, because they can finally earn money and afford a better lifestyle.