* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Marsabit, Kenya, March 2, 2015- As governments, NGOs, and businesses around the world mark International Women’s Day under 2015’s theme of “Make it Happen” (#makeithappen), Kathleen Colson, just as she has for nearly a decade, will be making good things happen for some of the poorest women in the world. Colson is the Founder and CEO of The BOMA Project. BOMA helps women start and maintain small businesses giving them the financial stability to better survive the long, brutal droughts in the drylands of Africa.
The BOMA Project is making a difference in the lives of women in some of the poorest and remotest parts of Africa by replacing humanitarian aid with sustainable income by giving them the tools they need to start small businesses in their communities. With this new and diversified source of income, they can feed their families, pay for school fees and medical care, accumulate savings for long-term stability, survive drought and adapt to the harsh realities of climate change.
“We have seen success with our income-led program, and that is totally attributable to the determination and hard work of the women who run the small businesses that help them earn an income and accumulate savings,” Said Colson from the dusty roads of Northern Kenya, a long way from her home in Southern Vermont. “BOMA is expanding rapidly to new villages and regions. We are now about to enter another rapid expansion and I need to be here so that our organization is in the best position to go to scale. This means hiring the very best people we can find and making sure that we don’t lose our connection to the values that define our work. “
It’s those values and BOMA’s commitment to preserving them that give Colson the confidence that BOMA can reach 100,000 women by 2018. The donor community has taken notice; just last year DFID, the U.K.’s foreign aid agency that promotes sustainable development to eliminate world poverty, awarded a 1.9 million dollar accountable grant to BOMA, The organization was also awarded a Lighthouse Activity award from the United Nations in 2014, one of six organizations recognized globally for their work with women impacted by climate change.
“This work gives me the moral imagination to believe that we can end extreme poverty in my lifetime,” Colson said when asked what inspires her to leave her comfortable home in the United States to work where she does. “At a minimum, we can make sure that women and children around the world will have what is necessary to feed and clothe themselves. That is what drives me every day.”
On this International Women’s Day, Colson and her team are helping women become independent in one of the poorest and harshest regions of the world. If BOMA can “make it happen” in a place like Northern Kenya, it is hard to imagine a place where their brand of passion and ingenuity could not make a lasting impact for women and their families throughout the drylands of Africa.
About the BOMA Project:
The BOMA Project implements a high-impact income and savings program that targets ultra-poor women in the drylands of Africa. BOMA’s two-year poverty graduation program, the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project, builds the resiliency of women living in extreme poverty, so they can survive shocks, including drought, and adapt to a changing climate. BOMA currently works in 31 settled villages and 623 semi-nomadic villages across 65,000 remote square kilometers in Northern Kenya.
BOMA has helped 7,431 women, who support more than 37,000 children, establish 2,301 businesses and 389 savings groups.
Read more about BOMA and help them reach their goal of changing the lives of 100,000 women by 2018 at www.bomaproject.org
