Why MWBT ?

The founders of MWBT come from the Maasai community and understand the challenges that Maasai people face. They know the Maasai way of life and appreciate its strengths. However, it's important to adapt and improve the livelihoods of Maasai pastoralists. We aim to empower women and the community as a whole to achieve their goals and find success. Women will form their own groups, receive support, and gain financial education to achieve the economic and social power they deserve.

How Do We Plan to Succeed?

To uplift women and support school girls, we will launch projects aimed at reaching marginalized communities that have been left behind in development. These projects will focus on benefiting everyone, especially women and girls.

Actions will be chosen based on important criteria as MWBT grows stronger.

These criteria include:

• Women will focus on problems they recognize and discuss together.

• The issues selected will matter to them.

• All women will understand the value of working on these issues now, even if they have other priorities.

• The actions will teach them about empowerment and strategies.

• Success will be valued, even if it's only partial.

• The actions will strengthen the women’s commitment to the organization.

The actions will be linked to the strategic objectives outlined below, with the understanding that this list will evolve through our experiences:

Strategic objectives:

• Promote quality education.

• Advocate for better health and make it a reality.

• Increase earnings and disposable income for women.

• Improve access to water for homes, schools, and clinics.

• Ensure a better and more reliable food supply.

• Eliminate harmful social practices that limit girls' freedom and undermine their self-esteem and independence.

Basis for these objectives and the actions they give birth to.

• Education

• The concerns:

• Access is financially difficult for some families.

• Repeated national exams that students are not prepared for can impede progress of students toward worthwhile goals on life.

• Facilities can fail to meet the needs of security and privacy for girls.

• Teachers are sometimes in short supply and not well trained.

• The actions possible:

• Expand the understanding of the importance of education and the need to remove of economic and social impediments for girls and boys.

• Develop interest in the adults of the educational experience of their children.

• Help families find the resources needed to keep their children in school.

• Open consultations with government officials with responsibility in education.

• Health concerns

• The concerns:

• Health facilities are sometimes not easily reached by the people.

• The specialty needed is not found in most locations.

• Medications can be expensive and the best not available.

• Medical people are of very uneven expertise.

• The actions possible:

• Create opportunities for adults to gain an understanding of illness causes and prevention.

• Introduce health improving home and community living conditions to lessen health hazards.

• Create opportunities for discussion with local health authorities.

• Open consultations with government officials with responsibility in education.

• Income

• The concerns:

• Women don’t have enough money.

• With inadequate income of their own they do not have standing in the families and communities to have an impact on spending priorities.

• The actions possible:

• Help women find the way to independent income.

• Help women do realistic analysis of markets, supply, and demand to strengthen and lead to productive individual businesses.

• Organize women’s cooperatives for greater income, establishing VICOBAs and other ways for women to share and collaborate in saving, loaning, and business.

• Agricultural sustainability and food supply

• The concerns:

• Food prices fluctuate with weather and other factors.

• Access to nutritious food is not always possible.

• Farm businesses are not stable with fluctuations in access to raw materials, good market prices, and water.

• The actions possible:

• Analyze the local food supply burden and food price uplifts brought on by droughts, heat, and cold caused by current climate condition.

• Bring best practice for the region to study and choose what innovations and interventions in agricultural practice could be implemented on a small scale and in collaboration with participating farmers to increase productivity reliably.

• Water access for homes, schools, and clinics

• The concerns:

• Clean safe water is not widely available

• Water borne disease is a serious source of sickness, weakness and death of children.

• Collecting water daily is a serious drain on women’s time and energy, especially when it is unsafe.

• The actions possible:

• Do a broad search for the many water access programs that have been implemented in rural Africa and analyze for cost and practicality.

• Do a thorough analysis of costs and benefits of permanent solutions such as wells and boreholes.

• Provide relief from water access burdens and health impacts while working toward better final solutions independently or in collaboration with government.

• Maasai girls’ freedom and autonomy

• The concerns:

• Traditional Maasai society includes practices of child marriage for girls and female genital mutilation.

• These are early traumatic acts in their own and the first sever steps in determining for girls and women that they are not in control of their bodies and their lives.

• The actions possible:

• Through women’s group discussions and solidarity, create an atmosphere in which the hardship and fearfulness girls experience due to young marriage and female genital mutilation can be openly discussed and programs to eliminate them can be established acceptably.

• Develop an understanding of the great benefits for the entire society that would come from young women being free of anticipating and experiencing these traumatic social practices that undermine their self-determination and creative life.

• Develop alternative practices so that those dependent on these practices for income or prestige have other ways to meet their needs.

• Support women’s groups spreading new ideas and creating an appreciation of freedom.