Community Farm
40% of the children we work with are from single-parent families. Of these, the majority are female-headed households, where there are on average two to three children. They have little chance of finding work in Kibera, but have nowhere else to live: by marrying they forfeited any rights they may have had to family land, even though their husband has died or deserted. The majority of these mothers are unskilled and only semi-literate, and have little choice but to resort to desperate measures, such as prostitution, to try to provide for their families.
Turning Point have established a Community Farm in Kinangop, a fertile area in the
foothills of the Aberdare mountains, 120km from Nairobi. The community has space
for 12 of these single-mothers with their children at one time, and the farm
provides for all their needs.
Nine mothers moved up to Kinangop with their children
in August 2007, they have learnt how to farm, how to plan ahead for the different seasons and
sell their crops at the market. The mothers are working towards living independently, that is
no longer needing support from an organisation such as Turning Point. We hope to follow these stages
to reach independence:
Phase 1
In this stage, the mothers live
together on the farm and cultivate a portion of the community land as a training ground to learn new farming skills. Each mother also has their own acre of land to plant and use as they wish.
Phase 2
Ten new homes have been built on the Turning Point land which the mothers have moved into while they continue to farm one acre of Turning Point land. The aim is to raise
funds to rent their own acre of land elsewhere in Kinangop. Moving out of the original community housing creates space for a further 10
mothers to move to the farm in the future to begin the process again.
Phase 3
This final stage will see the mothers living in their own homes on Turning Point land
while renting land off of the Turning Point farm. The mothers will be free to stay in
these homes indefinitely and new homes will be built as new groups of mothers move
through the process.
