Echoes of Change: How One Woman-led CBO is Empowering Maasai Women in The Face of Climate Change
Stacey, a Maasai businesswoman, opens up to Samuel Hall about living and running a community-based organisation in an environment where Maasai traditions and norms meet the challenges of climate change.
The arid town of Suswa, nestled within Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, echoes with the jingle of cowbells from cattle and goats grazing nearby. The sun-scorched afternoons find refuge under the shade of umbrella-like Acacia trees, a hallmark of the Kenyan savannah.
Here, tucked away amongst the acacia trees, we see a Maasai woman sitting on a chair, focused intently on her phone screen. She introduces herself as ‘Stacey’. “I am a businesswoman in Suswa. I’m a mother of three beautiful kids. I’m a gender activist and the founder and CEO of Naretoi Suswa Women’s CBO,” Stacey describes with pride the multiple roles she undertakes.
The Evolving Roles of Maasai Women
However, perhaps with all of Stacey’s roles, she is most passionate about running the ‘Naretoi Suswa Women’s CBO — eponymous to the village where the CBO operates.
Her entrepreneurship journey in Suswa unfolds against personal and community-driven transformation. Originally from Kajiado County, she moved to Suswa seven years ago to live with her husband — as a traditional ‘Maasai wife’ — whose duties revolve around household chores, taking care of the children, and farming in the backyard, all whilst ensuring all her husband’s needs are met.
While Stacey does not shy away from sharing her appreciation of the ‘culture and cultural values’ of the Maasai, she reveals that beneath the cultural richness lies a problematic reality for women, especially women trying to be independent, in a culture where dependence on men is expected.
Despite Stacey having a husband who supports her initiatives, the dynamics within her household are an apt representation of the evolving roles in Maasai society. Stacey shares that when her husband is in Suswa, it is easier to maintain her traditional roles as well as her roles as a businesswoman.
However, the challenges arise when her husband leaves for extended periods to find greener pastures for their cattle — a recurring reality as weather patterns become more unpredictable, leaving Stacey to shoulder all the responsibilities alone.
“I have to do six different tasks when he is not around, all alone. But when he is here, he takes the kids to school as I prepare the house, and then maybe he goes to the farm as I check on our butcheries. So when he is around, I don’t have to do everything alone,” Stacey adds.
Stacey’s story resonates with Samuel Hall’s research in multiple contexts, including Kenya. Climate change is a threat multiplier for women. They are disproportionately responsible for securing fuel, water, and food in many areas. Girls are also often forced to eat less, the first ones to drop out of school, and may also be the victims of forced marriages.
With men leaving the household, women shoulder additional responsibilities, including the challenges of securing food and walking long distances for water. As Stacey mentions, women’s roles change significantly due to climate change.
The Commodification of Maasai girls
For the last five years, Stacey has been running a business in an environment where Maasai traditions intersect with geographical and social challenges of climate change.
As the climate becomes increasingly erratic and farming cycles are disrupted, families grapple with economic hardships due to climate-induced challenges. Its ripple effects on girls are profound. Stacey emphasises the heightened risks girls face in the absence of protective structures during male migration, noting:
“Women are at a very high risk because the men have to leave the house to graze the cows, meaning the women are left alone at home, and when mothers have to leave to collect firewood or water, you never know who will come to that house and rape the girl.”
The vulnerability intensifies as girls, left unattended, become more susceptible to early pregnancies, a circumstance often met with societal disapproval and detrimental consequences.
The economic hardships, aggravated by climate change, push families to view their daughters as commodities, perpetuating harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), prioritising boys’ education over girls’, and early marriages.
Our research has shown a significantly higher awareness among women about community-level solutions. Women are often best placed to devise and drive responses that will promote economic security and health in the face of climate challenges. Being on the frontline, they are more aware of locally adaptive strategies, and using that information can help build community resilience.
Building A Community-Based Organisation: By Women & For Women
It is these experiences, observation, and local knowledge that led Stacey to start the Naretoi Suswa Women CBO with five other women who were either survivors of FGM or, like her, married at an early age.
“All of us founders have our own story. We saw the community, especially the women go through a lot because most are young and uneducated. Someone has to depend on their husband so that she can eat. We started this community-based organisation aiming to change the lives of young women in the community. Naretoi provides services that are directly beneficial to the community,” Stacey explains.
Naretoi CBO seeks partnerships with local and international organisations to provide financial and personal support. For instance, they partnered with a biogas company to provide women in Suswa with biogas cylinders in their households. This benefited the women and the community, considering fewer women needed to cut down trees for firewood, saving time and the environment.
Additionally, Naretoi advocates for the importance of education within the community — to enable women and girls to get the necessary knowledge and skills to be independent and tackle harmful situations. They also work on educating the community about women’s rights and advocating against FGM and forced marriages.
“We educate vulnerable Maasai women so they can get to know themselves and their rights … And once they know their rights, and once men are educated about the rights of women, I think the community will be so good,” says Stacey, highlighting Naretoi’s goals and stressing that women’s issues do not happen in a vacuum. To truly empower women, it is also necessary to educate the men in their community.
Undoubtedly, CBOs — as with any community-focused organisation — need resources to meet their goals, and Naretoi is the same. With a level of discouragement and frustration, Stacey speaks on the constant constraints to accessing resources, not only as a founder of a CBO but as a Maasai woman.
Her story depicts an unevolved environment where women can not access formal financing without their husbands’ approval and sign-off. Besides traditional constraints, CBOs in rural areas are often overlooked in funding schemes as they must meet the extensive criteria that donor organisations require. These inapplicable ‘checklists’ frequently undermine the impact of CBOs and tend to fund organisations that are not within the community — consequently misappropriately addressing the community’s needs.
CBOs such as Naretoi request a reform in funding metrics, one that will appreciate the direct impact of CBOs. “The support that my CBO needs is funding because we can’t do this without funds,” Stacey says.
In the face of these challenges, Stacey’s commitment to her community through her CBO is traditionally radical and a lifeline for girls seeking protection and empowerment in the wake of climate-induced vulnerabilities.
