My name is Solomon Odiero, from Nairobi, Kenya. I am married with 3 beautiful girls. The nest is still growing, though.

Growing up in Hawinga in rural Kenya, I herded sheep and cattle and ran barefoot to school and back home all through my primary school days. I had to learn how to swim and swim well while barely 4 years old; survival in crossing swollen streams while grazing animals or on your way to kindergarten or school games demanded swimming skills as soon as you realized that mama would not always be around to save you whenever you were away from home.

I graduated from primary school at the top of my class, went on to high school, and onto university, where I studied Mathematics and Business and Education. Whenever I was back in the village during campus recess I would teach and mentor pupils at my former school.

I would later graduate from university and take up a career in teaching, still only 21 years old, just out of my teens, before later joining banking as a management trainee when I was 28. Since then I have been a career banker. I would later on add an MBA in Finance to fortify my banking practice.

Now, I am determined to give back to society. And what better place to start than in my rural village, where we plan to organize about five villages into a farming commune with a SACCO to boot. We want to provide boreholes, modernize agriculture, market the produce, carry out value addition and provide affordable credit to all the homes. This will raise living standards significantly after just a few years and lift these people out of poverty. And God willing, we shall accomplish this.

So why am I joining the Zidisha Fraternity? Because, well, I want to see how this works, and if we can raise cheap enough funds on the platform to partly finance our budding projects back in the 5 villages. Maybe we could even replicate a platform like this one for our village mission, pooling funds from village alumni to onward lend to various homes and work with those homes to see to it that the credit is put to good and productive use.

Thank you, and God bless all of you members, both the lender and the borrower.

The family business we run at the moment is a butchery doubling up as a restaurant, so this is in essence a food business. It is just a start up at the moment, so we shall see how it grows with effort and time. We plan to open several similar outlets within towns in Kenya.

Expenses revolve around rent, supplies of food stuffs and wages to staff. Revenues are realized from sales at the butchery and the restaurant.

My passion, however, is to build a thriving village-based savings and credit co-operative society that empowers rural folks to grow out of poverty.

I want to do what I have described above - turn those rural villages into a thriving farming community, with access to cheap credit, modern farming tools, churning out good produce season after season, and with access to good markets, with children going to good schools and the whole area semi-industrializing in the long run.

And intertwined with all that, social cohesion built around moral accountability, sanctity of life and family, and Godliness.

We shall be back here soon to look for initial funding for the co-operative society once it is set up.

So Help Us GOD.

We would like to buy a Chiller for use in keeping cold bottled water, fresh juices and soft drinks for a cool, refreshing enjoyment by our customers amidst the sometimes sizzling heat of the day.

We have identified a good chiller in a150 L Von VARV 15 DAS Vertical Cooler, with an internal capacity of 150 litres. This is available from Hot Point Appliances Ltd, and is priced at Kshs 53,995/=.

We have saved some money towards the purchase of the cooler, and we have turned to Zidisha to raise Kshs 23,995/= of the purchase price.

Our eatery's clientele is growing, and we would like to keep it that way. We have grown from a little take away butchery to a small restaurant, and we aim to become a large restaurant chain with multiple outlets in the not too distant future.

Zidisha's gracious financiers have in the past enabled us to buy a deep freezer and a meat mincer, which have helped us serve well the needs of our growing customers. We are grateful for their continued help. We are reaching out to them again to help fund the purchase of the cooler.

Thank you.