Gatundu Women Initiative coordinators. [Photo/kenyanewsagency.go.ke]
A group of women is making nutritional flour, crisps to encourage people, especially the elderly, to consume healthy foods to keep at bay ailments caused by poor eating habits
For Gatundu North United Women Initiative group, better health comes before anything else.
The group made up of 35 members began in 2015 to sensitize the elderly on better use of organic farm produce to fight lifestyle diseases.
The diseases are brought about by poor choice of diet, lack of exercise, overuse of alcohol and smoking.
It all started with an idea by some members to curb lifestyle diseases that had then affected many residents, mainly the elderly. The initiative also aimed at empowering housewives.
The group whose slogan is ‘healthy eating, healthy bodies’ make crisps, ugali, porridge, chapatis, mandazi, biscuits and cakes from banana fruits, cassava, strawberry and sweet potatoes.
Irene Nyambura Mukuha, the group’s coordinator says a bunch of bananas with 10-15 pieces of banana, a slice of cassava, some strawberry leaves and a piece of sweet potato can produce a kilo of flour, which the group sells at Sh200.
They buy banana fruits, cassava, strawberry and sweet potatoes from women farmers within Gatundu North and mill them into a flour using ordinary posho mill machines.
They later converge at different locations depending on their arrangements to prepare the final products, which they sell to locals.
In a good month, the group, which meets to make the products twice a month, makes Sh40,000. Although the group does not have a specific market, members are mandated to market the initiatives’ products during women gatherings.
Lack of milling machines, poor marketing of their products, lack of enough capital to start an organic products factory are some of the challenges the group is facing.
The initiative has also created employment opportunities for product distributors who are women, ensuring that women no longer depend on men for provision.