Mama Kwa Mama: a Kenyan women-to-women fund helping thousands of Nairobi’s most vulnerable

The Mama Kwa Mama fund is one of the ways the Muungano Alliance is working to support people through the economic crisis caused by the national and global response to the Covid-19 health crisis. It has so far supported over 10,000 households.

In Swahili, “mama kwa mama” means “mother-to-mother” or “women-to-women”. The fund was established by Muungano Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT) and Buildher and raises money through professional women’s networks. AMT is the urban poor fund of Muungano wa Wanavijiji, the Kenyan federation of slum dwellers. Buildher is a non-profit organization that partners with the Muungano Alliance.

This post explains a little about how the fund works and what it has done so far.

An economic crisis from a health crisis

Kenya’s first identified case of Covid-19 was in March. By early July we had nearly 9,000 cases, of 200,311 people tested (of a national population of about 50 million). As cases continue to spread, the pandemic’s brutal economic impact is especially apparent in informal settlements.

Many of Nairobi’s informal settlement residents earn their living through irregular, casual work or for daily wages. Many others rely on daily incomes from their small businesses. When many offices, services and businesses closed down during the pandemic, a lot of this work and these income sources quickly dried up. Low-income households have limited savings to cushion a blow in times of crisis, and the disruption of livelihoods has left many people in desperate need of support. Measures to support Nairobi’s poor during and after this pandemic (and future pandemics) need to be prioritized and implemented.

Mama Kwa Mama is one response to these needs, established by AMT and Buildher who have mobilized a small group of women drawn from various professional backgrounds to join hands and create a fund. The fund calls on Kenyan women from all walks of life to work with courage and faith during this time of need — to use their social, professional and political networks to mobilize the resources required to support the most vulnerable families and communities in the city.

Who and how Mama Kwa Mama helps

The Mama Kwa Mama Fund assists the most vulnerable people in Nairobi’s informal settlements. In particular, it aims to support: people living with disabilities; people with pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension; the elderly over 70 years; and widows, single mothers and pregnant women.

Working closely with a multiplicity of partners that have strong ties to local communities in informal settlements and experience in supporting vulnerable groups — including Muungano wa Wanavijiji, Buildher, Access Afya, the Catholic church and KDI — Mama Kwa Mama has developed a list of over 10,000 names of people whose households can be classified as the city’s most vulnerable. The list includes identity numbers and mobile phone numbers for verification. Through direct fundraising and networks built by the fund, almost all these 10,000 households have today received some form of assistance, in the form of food packages and/or cash transfers.

Food packages and cash transfers: what the fund has done so far

Mama Kwa Mama continues to mobilize resources through the M-changa platform and hopes to continue supporting Nairobi’s most vulnerable. Some of its achievements so far:

In May, Mama Kwa Mama raised about USD 5,500 from individual donations, which was used to purchase food and non-food items for 250 households in Kibera.

In April, May and June, packages of essential food and non-food items worth USD 12,000 were donated by the Ramgarhia Youth Association and supported 500 needy families in Huruma, Ghetto, Mukuru and Pangani, whose names were drawn from the Mama kwa Mama list.

Between April and June, Buildher provided food packages to 441 vulnerable households drawn from the Mama Kwa Mama list, in Huruma, Mathare and Korogocho.

Other families on the list who did not receive food packages have had cash transfers, provided through linkages built by Access Afya and AMT.

You can contribute and support this work

On inception, Mama Kwa Mama raised funds from its founding members, who gave their time and money to set up the fund. Now, Mama Kwa Mama fundraises through the M-Changa crowdfunding platform, with a Paybill Number to enable M-Pesa contributions from Kenyan supporters. The account’s day to day management is through M-Changa, which charges a commission for its services. A committee of five women manage the fund and ensure all remaining funds raised are used for their intended purposes.

You can support this initiative from Kenya or overseas.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE MAMA KWA MAMA FUND