KENYA WOMEN FRUSTRATING TRUST

For years, Kenya Women Finance Trust has been uplifting the women of Kenya’s lives to heights hitherto unheard of. It has lived to its motto of providing Banking services to women, a gender for years which has been marginalized in Kenya and world at large. Since its inception in 1982, it has grown from strength to strength and now serves the following regions; Nairobi, Rift Valley, Nyanza, Mt. Kenya, Coast, and Western.
The organisation offers loans on individuals and groups. It also offers savings on women. Loans on individual are given according to the amount one has saved within a specified period e.g. having a saving of kshs. 2500 warrants you to a loan of kshs. 10,000. This makes cash easily available to women in need. Loans offered are basically geared towards women empowerment through business ventures but on some occasions these loans can be taken for health purposes or education.
Through this organization Kenyan women have heard a voice and even financial audacity to equal their male counterparts in an environment where only males survive. Nowadays you can see women cruising around in big machines and claiming ownership to international size business establishments. Kenya Women Finance Trust has proved its importance.
But wait, what about that common Mwanainchi? The Wanjiku who has only heard of education through her children and she never stepped into the doors of an educational establishment! This is the woman who struggles hand to mouth to raise the minimum kshs.500 to pay for savings. Her dreams match that of the success woman on the top. Her ultimate goal; to start a business.
Such are women who venture blindly into these microfinance institutions with the hope of making it big but only end up frustrated, demented and poorer than they began. Their dreams shattered with ugly reality that just like any bank the products are juicy, flashy, colourful and immeasurable in returns but like a shylock they break you left, right and center.
As earlier mentioned, the purpose of the establishment of KWFT as an MFI (Microfinance Institution) was to help women start small businesses and hence build a financial base that will sustain them.
Trouble is, starting a business requires analysing various factors, checking on the market trends, gaps and how you can fill the void. A quality that is rare, it requires training, wit and personal experience. Therefore Wanjiku comes out of the organization equipped with the loan and full of admiration but with little knowledge on how to manufacture wealth overnight and avoid the sordid life she has lived. with no budget plans, she starts streamlining the money to at least afford a sizable meal while it last. Wanjiku therefore reassures herself that all will be well and clothes her children pay some bills and maybe start an mboga business. She brings tomatoes and with her poor judgment they go bad before the first customer shows in, she tries in sukuma wiki (kale) and it is scorched by sun to the detriment of the potential buyers. Her fears grow big as the grace period wares on and she has to repay the money she does not have! Where does that leave her?
She turns to what she has at hand and slowly starts factoring down her assets to repay the loan! Even before she has a say, the local women’s leader summons other group members and her house is stormed. Everything of value is taken to resettle the loan.
These are stories whispered in streets and villages. Of women lost in doom and gloom of financial institutions. What financial institutions do not tell you is, how ruthless they can be when money is not returned in due course, they entice you to take their loans promising you of a more comfortable life only to realize later that, loans are the business juice for bankers not for the loanees.
Money is an idea, not the paper what you do with it is the wealth or the doom of a future  you dreamed to be so comfortable. In any case, it is imperative that when disbursing this funds, a microfinance institution, especially the one which deals with the empowerment of women or any marginalized group, to come up with a means of evaluating individuals capacity to honour their repayment of the loan or else come with a proper mechanism of breaking down the repayment exercise so as to be considerate. 
I know it’s too much to ask, but don’t we have individuals out there who can teach these women on the means readily, available and of course, for those with small pieces of land, the organization could partner with an agricultural affiliate that can help this women to maximize on the loans they are given by producing agricultural produce which can later be channeled to a marketing organisation.  By so doing there will be more women in the network and of course making KWFT live up to its name. Selling women’s’ property to reclaim the loan really makes the organisation live up to its motto, Banking on Women!!! Yea, relying on women!!!