Nick Oketch is an award-winning young social entrepreneur with over 4 years’ experience of working with the marginalized and the disadvantaged communities in rural Siaya County in western Kenya. Nick Holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Moi University and is a 2016 Women Deliver Young Leader, Every Hour Matters Champion and UNLEASH Talent Participant 2017. As the program director for Paradigm Youth Network Organization, a local non — profit community based organization, my responsibilities include the provision of strategic leadership, research, networking, resource mobilization, project development and management, and developing successful monitoring, evaluation, and reporting tools for projects focusing disadvantaged and marginalized communities in rural Siaya County. While attending high school in rural Homa Bay District of western Kenya, I grew acutely aware of disparities between girls and boys his age when it came to having the freedom to direct the course of their lives. I also realized that women and Girls living in a male-dominated society were poorly equipped to change the situation. During my final year in college, I launched Paradigm Youth Network Organization (P.Y.N.O) whose mission was to empower girls and women through education and property ownership, while engaging youth as advocates for women’s rights. Among its activities P.Y.N.O provides scholarships and educational materials to girls in need, links young women to mentors, equip out of school girls with vocational and entrepreneurial skills, and supports youth-led households in launching income generating activities. Also important is sensitizing the community on the importance of girls education and advocating for the abolition of traditional practices which includes; Female Genital Mutilation, wife inheritance, polygamy, wife battering, early forced marriage, sexual violence and lack of property ownership. In additional to girl child and women empowerment, P.Y.N.O has expanded its activities to include sustainable peace promotion and intercultural understanding, environmental protection, and human rights advocacy.
In Kenya, good quality meat which is a main protein source for several rural poor households is scarce and very expensive for average citizens causing health hazards especially children who suffer malnutrition due to lack of protein in their body. People in rural poor communities cannot afford this necessity because of lack of jobs, lack or little education and insufficient access to credit facilities from commercial banks and other financial institutions. Rampant deforestation by locals for fuel and poor agricultural techniques results to soil degradation and climate change, with agriculture being the mainstay of the economy in these areas. Our Enterprise Adopt a Chicken to save a Village which is a social enterprise use poultry and its products to solve many social problems. First of all, we supply affordable good quality chicken to the community to fight against malnutrition especially in young children. We use poultry manure from our poultry farm to produce cheap renewable bio-gas systems in households resulting to reduced deforestation. We also combat soil degradation by producing enhanced low cost organic fertilizers for farmers made from the poultry droppings. We make pillows out of Chicken feathers. We also run a credit scheme for women and youths where they get our various products on credit and pay later without any interest charged this is done after many key training sessions on entrepreneurship and Agri Business. Finally we provide access to education for young children both in Primary and Secondary school by having them and their parents pay tuition and other school needs using farm inputs we use in the poultry.
Our project has been of great success since we try to solve a wide range of problems from health, education, and climate change and employment. Various agencies such as governments and NGOs are trying to solve them too. However, their solutions are not sustainable and are usually not successful due to lack of practicality, poor execution and corruption. Businesses in the chicken sector, health and education are profit driven making solutions expensive and unsustainable. We succeed because we use community based resources and man power inclusively to create and deploy our solutions and activities.
The project has an inclusive model which creates impact to the community and to everyone that is involved. For example we have given chickens as loans to over 300 women and youth which has enabled them have access to alternative credit facilities, we have installed over 70 biogas units in households used for cooking which has reduced the dependence on fuel wood and curbed deforestation. We have produced over 10 tons of organic fertilizers which has helped increase yields of crops and enhanced soil fertility. Additionally, we have assisted 1000 children in rural areas to get access to education and health insurance and have supplied over 100 tons of affordable chicken to the market which has reduced malnutrition and raised incomes for producers and their families. Currently we have a network of over 100 farmers. We are empowering women in Siaya County who make up 75% of our partners, with our value of creating opportunities for all. We plan to impact additional 1000 farmers and 10,000 kids by the end of 2017.
Since our solution has been widely appreciated and accepted throughout Kenya and now Africa we will be hoping to replicate this ideas in other counties in Kenya and finally in other Countries in Africa we want to create a network of empowered communities who are economically resilient against the droughts by diversifying livelihood strategies and embracing other forms of poverty eradication. We have gotten interest in several Counties in Kenya for example Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Nairobi and Mombasa for our model and lately in Uganda. Our solution is affordable and not too expensive to create and implement. We are just facilitators throughout the value chain. We plan to be in 8 African countries by 2025 and touch millions of lives. We will spread by working with partner country teams and franchising our philosophy and brand.
To empower the community we work with, we are involved in several community initiatives, for example, we use 75% of the profit from the social venture to give vulnerable and at risk rural youth in Siaya County the tools to better their lives and that of their families through sexual health and reproductive rights and family planning access advocacy programs. In a span of 2 years, I have directly impacted around 8,000 in and out of school youth, especially the LGBTI members and girls living with HIV/AIDS, who are now able to access sexual and reproductive health services. I also continue to campaign against harmful practices such as wife-inheritance, Female Genital Mutilation, child marriages, and forced raping of Lesbian girls. Through these, I hope to create a generation that respects, protects and promotes the rights of women.
It is through these initiatives of driving the SGDs in my country and beyond, I was selected as one of the participants of UNLEASH Lab 2017 in Copenhagen Denmark. Participating in this program will give me the best opportunity to share, interact and network with other like-minded brilliant young people from around the world this will ensure I gain new insights that I can use to further my efforts in addressing and advancing the SDGs, I will also be able to develop my idea further and also contribute to existing ideas. I will further have a perfect opportunity to explain to the attendees what I am doing in my community and how a simple idea of poultry keeping is changing communities in Kenya by solving complex issues like our persistent problems in education, healthcare, climate change and employment among our communities keep young children in school hence improving the lives of women and young people in Kenya.
