Urban tomato farm to generate funds for a kids' soccer team

Entrepreneur

About Me

I grew up on the shores of Lake Victoria and was a fisherman long before I could read. Where I grew up, school was never a priority. We were taught to fish and then school followed later, to whomever wanted to study.

I wanted to be different, so I went to school. I was orphaned when I was barely ten, and thus had a tough time attending school, what with a fisherman father who could barely make ends meet! The schooling my guardians managed to offer me was up to secondary level. I was unable to attend college. To make it worse, I finished high school when I was just 16. I had skipped classes in primary because my teachers felt I was too smart for them!:-) So at 16, out of school, with no college prospects, or job, because I could only be hired legally after I had turned 18, I embarked on fishing.

I worked in the lake until I had saved enough to travel to the city, and that is where my fairy tale started. I started working menial jobs and selling second hand cooking pots. The pay was litttle. but the job fulfilling. I loved the promise of a bright future that the city ushered in every morning. The bustle of people and the opportunities they presented! Thus after about 6 month in the city, I started selling home pressed juice.

To date, I consider that the most exciting venture I ever undertook, and hope to one day return to it. I used to visit the farmers market very early in the morning, and buy assorted fruits (avocados, oranges, mangoes, passion fruits), and heads back to my little house to squeeze juice. I used to package in small plastic bags that I sold for about KES 10 (about USD 0.05) then!! I was not married yet, so the profits were a tidy sum! I sold juices for close to a year and only stopped when I could not meet the stiff regulations the city health department imposed on vendors. Thankfully, I had saved some money and decided to switch to selling second hand clothes.

I have been in the clothing business for the past decade, met my wife while doing it, and sired children and raised them from the proceeds of the clothing business! The culture of the society I live in helped make my business grow. People like looking good and dressing in high quality clothing. The second hand clothes promise beauty and class unmatched.

My children attend school and they are doing well. They hope to be sports people when they grow up, with my oldest son asking that I take him to Arsenal academy in 2017! We play football alot as a family. Thankfully, my job as a business person accords me flexible timings and I am able to play football as a hobby while instilling sportsmanship in the lads at an early age.

My Business

I am a full time business person. My main source of income is clothes selling, mixed farming, and security installations business. In farming, I mainly plant sunflower and rear chicken. My kind of farming is useful because it involves healthy living. The healthy living bit also makes my products to be in high demand. My customers know that sunflower oil is very healthy and contains no cholesterol, besides, they are sure that I produce it from pure sunflower seeds and so have no qualms in buying it. The chicken I rear are purely indigenous and that makes them highly desired among my customers.

That I was unemployable due to no college certification, I found myself in this business as a way to make ends meet. I have never regretted that twist of fate! In chicken rearing alone, I am able to make about USD 25 per day selling chicken. That is minus selling eggs or chicks which cumulatively, on a good day, could earn me up to USD 60. Mind you, these amounts are because I do this on a very small scale.

To run the small chicken enclosure, I spend about USD 250 per month on feeds, medicines and other overheads like electricity. That still leaves me with a tidy sum that keeps the house hold running in terms of food, and other bills. I use some, whenever possible, to restock on day old chicks for consistency in the chicken stock.

In August last year, 2015, I even managed to top up on my other savings from chicken proceeds and enrolled for a BA in Security studies! This degree is meant to be a boost for my security business as I know and realize that I will need to venture into that sector fully in the future as profits dip on the other sectors I engage in. That is a new frontier that I will talk about some other day.

Loan Proposal

I intend to set up an urban farm that will generate money which will be used to run a soccer team of kids aged Under 15 years, which I have. Besides farming,I have a passion for kids' development soccer, and I always try to help kids develop their soccer skills and talent, moreso those from disadvantaged families.

I have a soccer club called Athletic Zaji FC, www.athleticzaji.com, which is filled up with kids from a low cost neighbourhood called Nyalenda, in my town of Kisumu. The kids come in to train everyday after school, and spend the entire weekends playing around. This keeps them off vices that are rampant in slum areas like gambling, glue sniffing, alcohol taking, backyard fights, video halls that show adult programs, wretchedness of the society and so on. Most have single parents, or from poor households that make it hard for them to acquire basics like meals and school books and pens. Most times, I chip in to help, but it is never enough.

It is for that reason that I thought to set up and modify my chicken farming to be an income generating activity for the kids and the team. Once there is a dedicated source of revenue for the club, I will be able to provide decent meals for them, and an occasional pen and book, and even school shoes. I shared the idea with a friend, and also Zidisha Loanee, Caroline Wanyama, who agreed to take a loan and purchase food supplies to feed the kids, at a subsidized rate. So far we are doing great, and this is bound to make it far much better.

With the loan, I hope to guarantee funds for paying for the kids' meals, purchase of footballs, shin guards, soccer boots, soccer uniforms, training cones et cetera. I intend to purchase more chicks, about 300, which will cost $300 USD. Also, I will set up a tomato patch with about $150 USD. This will give us about 200 stems of tomato plants, which will start maturing in 12 weeks. The tomatoes will be planted in washed cement sacks, which will be acquired for nearly free, $5 USD for 200. At maturity, a stem will have the potential of yielding at least $5 (on the lower side) worth of tomatoes. Sale of tomatoes promise to give at least $800 USD. When birds mature from the 16th week, they have the potential of bringing in at least $1000 USD. At harvest times, I have identified at least two parents of the kids who will earn at least $3 USD each helping out in sorting and packaging the produce.

The generated income will partly be injected back into the venture to make it more sustainable, repaying this Zidisha loan and the rest will go into making this kids' lives far much better when they come in to play football. Consequently, I hope to use this project to encourage the kids' parents to set up small chicken rearing ventures, and backyard gardens, so that they can have source of food and supplementary income for their families. As this venture impacts on the many that I hope to touch with, it is clear that my family will be transformed too. My kids will always have play mates, and they will continue learning invaluable lessons from interacting with so many kids from diverse backgrounds.

Albert Pike was spot on when he quipped, “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Please fund this loan and help transform lives around me.

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