Seeds for our backyard vegetable farm

Hellen

Port Victoria, Kenya

32% repaid

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How it Works

Entrepreneur

Name

Hellen

Member since

January 2020

On-time repayments

18 installments • 50%

About Me

I grew up in rural Kenya, a small town called Port Victoria. I and my 4 siblings would play by the shores of the lake and catch fish for dinner using small hooks in the afternoon. Our parents were loving and taught us to do things differently. That is how my entrepreneurial journey started. As a kid, I used to sell sugarcane on weekends in the marketplace. The money would help supplement my parent's income.

I remember my parents struggling to put us through school, and fend for us. My uncle generously chipped in to help us. Then I met some kind nuns later on in life who supported me through school and college.

After college, in which I graduated as a nursery school teacher, I started working. The job is fulfilling but I always felt empty when I would travel back home and meet the people I knew, wallowing in poverty. Most households rely on fishing and new policies have made the trade unable to sustain the families. Being lake people, their livelihoods revolve around fishing and that is all they know.

Children grow up thinking they can be fishermen, and that is how it has been for a long time. I might have become a fisherman too, had I been a boy, but at least, I developed fishing as a hobby.

My Business

My business is simply a grocery venture. I supply vegetables, fish and fruits to families and eateries in the city. My goods are in demand because they are of high quality, having been sourced directly from producers, and the history of their production is known. Furthermore, they are purely organic, with no trace of chemicals, - and that makes them so much liked.

I chose this business because it was the best way, for now, that I could use to impact on the people of my village. Currently, in my database, I have 65 women and 10 men I impact directly by this venture. Some have small 20x20 plots while the largest has an acre under vegetables. It was in 2018, December, when I spoke to women, who were mostly stay at home mothers, and told them that they could set up vegetable patches in their backyard, and I would get the product and sell it a premium in the city, thus fetching a higher return and offer them a source of income. Four women started and indeed I started by selling to my workmates. When word spread in the village of what I was doing, a total of 43 women asked if they could also start growing vegetables. I gladly accepted and assigned each a different variety to grow. The results were impressive.

Soon, their fishermen husbands asked if I could also take their fish and save them from exploitative brokers. I tried it out and it turned out really well.

We sell about KES 50,000 (500USD) of produce a week. 30% of that goes into offsetting transport expenses, logistics and labor costs and I earn 10%. The remaining 60% is paid to the suppliers, - the women or men back in the village who supply the produce. A woman supplying vegetables worth, say, KES 10000 (100USD) easily earns KES 6000 (60USD), which is paid promptly and is higher than KES 4000 (40USD) or less, which would have been paid by a broker, for the same quantity of produce.

I use the profits to buy toys or meals for kids in my school and town, since I have none of my own. I am also saving to start an institution in the future. That way, I will be able to offer scholarships to deserving kids and change communities.