Our programme
One programme, three inseparable parts
A savings group, a gender-transformative curriculum, and a genuine alternative-income pathway — for one or two groups of 15 to 25 girls and young women, in one Mombasa community.
The model
What the programme actually consists of
Each component is doing a job the other two cannot do alone.
The savings group
A member-owned savings and lending group. Members contribute small amounts weekly, the group holds and lends its own funds, and members decide together how it is used. Two things come out of this: a financial buffer that makes leaving a dangerous situation possible, and a weekly structure of collective decision-making that the rest of the programme runs inside.
The gender-transformative curriculum
Structured sessions running alongside the savings meetings, covering rights, consent, negotiation, how money moves inside relationships, and the norms that make violence feel ordinary. Designed to engage men and boys in the community rather than work around them — because the evidence says the economic gain is what triggers backlash, and the curriculum is what defuses it.
The income pathway
Vocational skills, apprenticeship placements and cooperative enterprise, tied to work that actually exists in Mombasa's port, tourism, trades and service economy. We would rather place ten girls in real paid work than train fifty in a skill nobody here is hiring for.
Funders sometimes ask for just the savings component, or just the training. We will decline. The evidence base is specific on this point: economic support delivered alone has, in some studies, increased household conflict where a male partner reads a woman's income as a threat to his standing. The programmes that produced large reductions in violence — IMAGE among them — paired the economic component with structured gender work. Delivering half of this model is not delivering half the benefit. It may be delivering harm.
Theory of change
Listen → Understand → Empower → Connect → Challenge → Transform → Flourish
Our full model has seven stages. Year One responsibly delivers the first four. We are showing you the other three so you can see where we are going — and see that we know the difference between a plan and an aspiration.
Listen
A real needs assessment in one Mombasa ward, with girls and young women themselves — not a survey designed to confirm what we already wrote in a proposal.
Understand
Map local economic-vulnerability and transactional-sex patterns, in coordination with Coast Women in Development and the Pwani GBV Network, so we build on what the coast already knows.
Empower
Run the combined pilot: savings group, gender-norms curriculum, and a real alternative-income pathway, together, for one or two groups.
Connect
Formal referral agreements for crisis-level needs: Mombasa GBVRC for medical and psychosocial care, FIDA Kenya for legal aid, the police gender desk for reporting.
Challenge
Advocacy on the policy and enforcement conditions that keep the pattern in place.
Transform
Culture-change and movement-building work across the wider issue areas in our full framework.
Flourish
Our philosophy in full: safety and joy treated as the same project.
Measurement
What we will count, and what we will admit
A first-year pilot with one or two groups cannot prove impact, and we will not claim it does. What it can do is generate honest operational evidence: did girls stay in the group, did savings accumulate, did anyone reach paid work, did the curriculum change what participants say about power and consent, and did referrals actually function when they were needed.
We will document what does not work with the same care as what does. An organisation that only publishes its successes is not producing evidence — it is producing marketing, and the sector already has enough of that.
Year One indicators
- Group retention and attendance across twelve months
- Total member savings accumulated, and loans issued and repaid
- Number of participants entering apprenticeship or paid work, and still in it at three and six months
- Change in participant-reported attitudes on gender norms, consent and financial control, measured at entry and exit
- Referrals made, and referrals that resulted in the participant actually receiving the service
- Participant-reported sense of safety, belonging and wellbeing — the Root Joys side, measured, not assumed
Full monitoring framework and data-protection approach available on request. Participant data is held under Kenya's Data Protection Act, 2019.
Referral pathway
When something is beyond us, it goes to someone equipped for it
Medical & psychosocial
Mombasa Gender-Based Violence Recovery Centre, Coast General Hospital — under formal MOU.
Legal & access to justice
FIDA Kenya — under formal MOU for legal aid and representation.
Reporting & protection
Police gender desk, and the county's Tononoka GBV Situation Room for coordination.