Turning Point Trust Blog
Nevis’ Story
Nevis lives in Kibera and has a small business selling fruit and vegetables. A loan from Turining Point’s microfinance office has enabled her to expand her business, attracting more customers. She works hard and has a busy schedule. Here she explains an average day in her life: Everyday I wake up at 4am to go [...]
Continue Reading >New Buildings in Kianda
When our centre in Kianda closed for Christmas, building work for our new Transition classroom and microfinance office began. We had bought the land a couple of months prior to the building work beginning and were waiting for the compound to be clear of children before starting the work. In the space of a week [...]
Continue Reading >Turning Point microfinance loans: How many and how much?
What is Community Economics?
‘Ubuntu’ means I am because we are, this word sums up the sense of community and interdependence traditionally valued in African society. Many things that we see in the West as an individual issue or responsibility, in Kenya are dealt with by a group or family or community. Money is just one example of this. [...]
Continue Reading >A chat with Anne
Anne is another of our microfinance members and is the person to go to if you want your hair done! Here’s what she has to say about business in Kibera. What’s your business? I have a salon to make people’s hair Tell us about your family I have 3 children aged 10 years, 7 years [...]
Continue Reading >A Chat with Petronilla
Petronilla regularly passes by the Turning Point microfinance office in Mashimoni to make repayments on her loan. The loan has helped her to establish a small business selling vegetables, which means she is able to support her children. Tell us about your family I have 3 children aged 8 years, 5 years and the last [...]
Continue Reading >A Chat with Rose
Meet Rose. She is one of Turning Point’s 300 microfinance members. She works hard selling omena (small fish) to support her family. Tell us about your family I have seven children and two grandchildren. My children have all left home except for my daughter who is 22 years. I stay with her and her two [...]
Continue Reading >Literally literacy: update 2
The Turning Point adult literacy class have been running for 3 weeks now and after a rather chaotic start, they have settled into some vague routine. We have about 14 regular members attending English and numeracy classes on a Monday and we’ve divided the group into a higher and lower class, one run by myself [...]
Continue Reading >Sounds from Creativity Classrom
If you walked past the creativity classroom on Wednesday afternoon you would’ve heard chants of a – e – I – o – u, ba – be – bi – bo – bu followed by much laughter as the microfinance literacy students realised how ridiculous they must sound to passersby. Wednesday’s classes couldn’t have been [...]
Continue Reading >Literally Literacy
Last week we ‘enrolled’ 28 microfinance members and quickly realised the need to divide the group into 3 levels: lower Swahili, higher Swahili and English, with numeracy being taught in each group. Yesterday classes began with English lessons, higher-level Swahili literacy and numeracy classes. It was a hectic beginning. Actually no. It was the opposite [...]
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