Kenya: Day 30

Pray for:
- God's provision to Rosemary and her family.
- Micro-finance to go beyond just giving loans, but doing business evaluation too

What happened:
- morning class got rained out
- met Ken at prestige, went down town
- went around different places to get brochures, did some souvenir shopping
- went to lunch, met Felix, a documentary photojournalist and filmmaker.
- went around to look at various banks
- went to Yaya
- went to Kibra Academy. met with Rosemary's mom
- went to Prestige, had dinner with Ken and Eva
- went home

Today, I met with Rosemary's mom, along with Ken and Principal Sobwa. She hadn't been able to afford school fees, so the intention was to find out what was going on.

Her mom had a small business as a caterer. But she got sick, fell behind, and couldn't afford stock to keep the business going.

We started by looking at her weekly business expenses. Groceries, rent, salary for her 1 employee, etc. Then we looked at how much she was making gross.

Afterwards, we looked at her personal expenses for herself and her two daughters. We asked about food, rent, clothes, toiletries, etc. As we were asking these questions, some of them numbers she quoted regarding toiletries and clothing were woefully low. She was quoting 200 KSH ($2.50 USD) a month for 3 women, which would include pads for feminine needs. Unrealistic by any standard.

After budgeting more appropriately, it was determined that she would not be able to make ends meet. She would be short by 2000 KSH ($25) per week.

Then, we asked her if there were any ways that she could expand her business. She said that the area that she was in was oversaturated. One solution was to move to a different area to set up shop, but rent and expenses would be higher too.

Before we sent her home, we asked her to put together a business plan, do some market analysis, and return on Wednesday so we can look it over.

If all goes well, we'll be entering the micro-finance business.

In the meantime, the money raised for Rosemary's school fees will be used like a scholarship to ease pressure on her mom.