"By this project, the dignity of our mothers came back to them", wrote Simon. He was one of our students at Nairobi University and son of Eunita, a widow of Ahero. Eunita was one of the ten members who started with micro-finance in 1988 in Ahero, in Nyanza province in Kenya.

Now, twenty two years later, Eunita is still a (selfreliant) member of the Ahero Catholic Widowsgroup, an independent group of churches and open to all widows, in spite of their faith. This group has 250 members now ... Also now this project has extended to nine villages in Nyanza province (Awasi, Nyamonye, Bar Korwa, Masogo, Reru, Bondo, Mageta-island and Ojolla) with more than 1300 widows in business.

Each village has a widow-coordinator, chosen by the group members who earns a small allowance. The nine villages are guided by one general coordinator who has done work from the start and is paid by the Kenyaproject in The Netherlands. Mrs Florence Ochome from Ahero is general financial coordinator. It is due to her excellent work that the projects in Kenya are doing very well. We will extend to the tenth village.


Aim of the project
When Mrs Rentia Krijnen-Hendrikx of Etten-Leur in The Netherlands heard from Mill Hill's father Affons Geerts (Kisumu) about inheritance (and it's bad effects) for LUO-widows near Lake Victoria, she was shocked to learn of this practice. As a widow in The Netherlands she received a small pension and after finishing university she got a job as economical theologian. She and her three children inherited the possessions from her late husband ...

Rentia decided, by father Geerts, to start with assisting widows who did not like inheritance and who wanted to be selfreliant. So, it started in Ahero with small amounts for assistance.

Important to this project is:

Rentia takes these reports with her to the board and donors in The Netherlands

History: houses, cooperative business, school fees, a Guesthouse and small projects
After six years from the start the request came to us to assist widows with repairing houses or: to build a new house for mother and children. Up until 2010 we built or repaired more than eight hundred houses.

After nine years from the start, the question came for cooperative business because not all women can handle money in a proper way. Their plans were: poshomills, shallow wells, small hotels, oxes and ploughs, cows, a guesthouse etcetera.
From profits the groups made crop fields for food. From that profit they bought more than two hundred goats in the nine villages and they started new small projects. Nice to see during our visits how aims of these projects succeed ...

In 2000 the request reached us whether the Dutch project could also assist with school fees because the widows also take care for fully orphans next to their own children. We decided to do this and founded a school fund in Etten-Leur. Nowadays we assist children in class eight, especially girls, children in secundary school and students in higher education. Some students have a job within the project.

Seven years ago we opened a Guesthouse in Awasi (see it's own page, in Dutch); we started with a medicine project in the villages, built two schools and seven shallow wells etcetera.


Activities in The Netherlands:
We earn project money by running two shops with second hand goods, publish reports of visits to Kenya, provide education at schools, give slideshow presentations for churches, schools, organizations, write articles and have a website.

Rentia Krijnen-Hendrikx, the board and
volunteers in Etten-Leur and Prinsenbeek/Breda