Help Water is Life Kenya Support More Widows in 2026!

What We're Raising
Our total 2026 Hope for Widows Program expenses is $90,000. Thankfully, we already have $50,000 secured.

Consider donating in the following ways:

1. Give a goat to a widow for $100
2. Give a grant to start a business for $150
3. Give a goat and a grant for $450
4. Sponsor a widow through the whole program for $1,200

About WILK's Hope for Widows Program
Maasai widows face a complicated set of challenges. Try to imagine a life where the loss of your husband makes you the brunt of persecution. Imagine that, as you grieve, your relatives chase you from your home to grab whatever property you have.

When their husbands died, they were stuck in a cycle of helplessness, isolation, and depression. Since widows are stigmatized in Maasai culture, they become scapegoats. The widow and her children are blamed any time something goes wrong in their village. To punish them, some brothers-in-law take widows’ possessions, land, goats, cash, and leave them with even less than they had before. We’ve heard this a dozen times.

Hope for Widows was developed to empower these women with business and life skills so they can provide for their families. We piloted this program in 2022. Through support from hundreds of people just like you, HFW has been flipping the script for Kenyan widows by supporting 150 widows.

Silato, a Group 4 widow from Risa, stands proudly earlier this month.

More Women Need Help
Many more widows long for the dignity and hope that these women now have. A few weeks ago, my co-founder Joseph Larasha arrived home at the end of a busy workday—and found nine women waiting at his house. His wife said they’d been there for hours. And this was not the first time they’d come.

They were widows from a neighboring area called Osoit. They knew two women, Nademi and Ruth, who were part of Hope for Widows (HFW). Both are now prospering after being trained and running their small businesses. They saw the example of these women and recognized a way out of their grinding poverty and persecution.

They have a community, they have businesses, they have savings, they have goats, and they have a sense of confidence that they can take care of things. They are examples to their children and their children’s friends.

Joyce with Nakeyia, a Group 2 Hope for Widows Graduate, at the Graduation Ceremony last summer.

Sente: A Success Story
Sente is a perfect example of a widow whose family has already transformed. Sente is a Group 2 Hope for Widows graduate. Her daughter Soila has been our HFW field assistant. Recently, her son Moses joined the Youth Entrepreneur Pilot Program. With all they learned about savings and budgeting, they planned together how each could contribute to build their homestead on their allocated land.

Before, this had seemed like an impossible dream. Then, after months of hard work and saving, they reached their goal!

Now Sente, her adult children, and their families each have built small houses. There’s also a paddock for their livestock with shade trees and a chair to enjoy a cup of tea. Sente and her family held a housewarming ceremony to officially open their home, and the WILK team was invited!

Unveiling our REDCap Data System
In addition to supporting more widows, our Water is Life Kenya team has a unique opportunity to understand and deepen the impact of the Hope for Widows program. To do this, we’ve partnered with data scientists at University of Pennsylvania.

During HFW, we collect questionnaires to track progress. In addition, field assistants visit widows on a weekly basis to collect business records like revenue and expenses. Most of this data, though, is collected on paper forms, and our small team has been looking for a better way to analyze it more quickly.

With our new partners in UPenn’s Clinical Research Collaboration Unit, a subdivision of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, we’re developing a Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) system that will organize all our HFW data. This new system will deepen how we understand and interpret the program's effectiveness and allow us to track widows’ progress in real time.

We were introduced to these talented, dedicated partners by two WILK donors. One of these donors, who is a widow herself, is a long-time supporter of WILK. Her second husband is an emeritus Biostatistics professor and former UPenn Director.

When he learned that we needed help improving our data system, he made a call. This partnership is only possible because he shared his gifts and connections with us! This professional REDCap data system is estimated to cost $30,000. Thanks to these two generous donors, we have already secured $10,000 of that $30,000.

With an improved data capture and analysis system, we can better show you, our donor community, the impact of your gifts. This accurate data will also help us improve the program much faster. Lastly, we are confident this will help us secure larger grants and expand the program even further in the coming years.

Group 4 of Hope for Widows gather at their Goats & Grants Ceremony in June 2025.

How You Can Help
The good news is that training and monitoring costs are already covered for the incoming Group 5 of HFW. Earlier this month, the Raskob Foundation informed us that it will support Hope for Widows with $30,000 each year over the next 3 years! With this incredible gift and a few others, our balance for HFW program expenses in 2026 is now $20,000. Add that to the REDCap balance, and our target is $40,000 additional dollars.

There are two specific ways you can support women in the HFW program:

1. Help us Expand: Let’s expand HFW in 2026! $20,000 will provide 40 widows with small business grants of $150, three goats at $100 each, and other key expenses.
2. Help us Understand: Let’s invest in understanding and improving HFW! $20,000 is the balance needed to create the new REDCap data system.

Ways to Donate
You make a tax-deductible donation to Water is Life Kenya in the following ways:

• Click "Donate" on this web page.
  
• Donate on Venmo (@waterislifekenya)
• Donate via PayPal by clicking here.
• Send an ACH wire transfer (contact us).
• Ask your employer about corporate matching.
• Support us through your Minimum Required Distribution (Tax ID: 26-3185829).
• Send us a check at this mailing address:
  
  Water is Life Kenya
  314 E. Main St.
  Kelway Plaza, Suite 2
  Newark, DE 19711