Featured Projects

The women of Kipchekwen Friends Women Group (KFWG) have been working together as a self-help group since 2014, however they experienced challenges with getting funding for their businesses. After hearing about Right Sharing they invited Field Representative Samson Ababu to visit the group. KFWG's grant was generously sponsored by West Richmond Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana.

Gondama Community Development Foundation (GCDF) is located in Sulima, at the southwest tip of the country. Sulima suffered greatly during the Civil War; many of the inhabitants fled or were killed. Since the war’s end in 2002, people have begun returning; however, those who had businesses prior to the war had since lost everything. With a RSWR grant, the women in this group were able to start successful fish-selling businesses and more than double their previous incomes.

Juhudi Friends Women Group (JFWG) is a group that RSWR helped form and train as part of our Capacity Building Training. The women all have retail businesses in Mbale market. The group is a mixture of tribes and religions, including several Quakers and one Muslim.

The women in this project all used to make their living as petty traders. During the Ebola crisis people were not able to go to the markets these women lost their livelihoods and ended up spending their savings. The women in this group used their RSWR grant to re-start their businesses in the local market, to pay for their children's school fees and re-grow their savings.

The Vasantham Pengal Sangam is funding vending businesses of 3 types: making murrukku (crunchy rice snacks), fruit vending, or fish vending.

There are many brick kilns in the area of this project, but the owners of often trap workers in a cycle of poverty by offering advances but paying inadequate wages. Women's Voice Trust (WVT) works among rural Dalit women. A Right Sharing grant enabled this group to collectively buy and start a brick kiln. As the owners of the kiln, the women collectively reap the profits. The women make 75,000 bricks every month.

Tewoh Community Development Organization (TCDO) works in two communities that were badly hit by the Ebola virus in 2014. Twenty-six people in the two communities died, and the village was quarantined for almost two years. The survivors were left with few resources and much work to do, with many women widowed and many children orphaned. With their loans from an RSWR seed grant, the women in the group make bread and soap to sell in smaller nearby markets.

This group with Social Welfare and Education Trust (SWEET) was sponsored by the Irish group Quaker Faith in Action in 2016. SWEET serves Sri Lankan repatriates, a disenfranchised and marginalized group within India.

Rural Women Development Trust (RWDT) works with former bonded laborers so that they are able to run their own businesses and reap the profits as owners. The women in this self-help group were all previously making coir rope for the dominant landowners in the district. After being released from bondage they found they could not make enough income to support themselves and their families. RWDT, together with the women in the group, developed this project so the women could run their own coir-making businesses.

This Youth Group was started in 2013 so young adults could work together to overcome the challenges in their community. The group independently arranged for trainings on farming from the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture, and on group management skills with the Kenyan Department of Social Services. With their grant, the group collectively started the three businesses they determined to be most economically viable in their community.

Vushitsyula Friends Women Group (VFWG) experienced an enormous setback when their chairperson was drugged and robbed after receiving the group's grant from RSWR. The group struggled with how to overcome these challenges, but with the guidance of RSWR Field Representative Samson Ababu and their pastor, the women came together as a group and persevered.