Usikimye is an organisation working towards ending the prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence (GBV). We exist to ensure that women and girls from Kenya and its environs are safe and free from violence, exploitation, neglect, and abuse and have safe access to high-quality comprehensive responses that are appropriate to their individual needs, vulnerabilities, capacities while at the same time, age and gender-sensitive.

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, women headed 32.4% of Kenya’s 11.41 million households in 2019. In informal settlements, women are in charge of the majority of homes. Women in informal communities, paradoxically, struggle to get stable employment. Despite the numerous difficulties, Nairobi’s slums also provide women the opportunity to start small businesses. The systemic barrier of obtaining access to start-up capital and markets is something many Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) in Kenya established by marginalized women must deal with. These MSEs lack access to the knowledge, resources, and markets required to turn their businesses profitable.

Due to a lack of social safety and appropriate working conditions, businesses in the informal sector struggle with low productivity and small capital markets. The absence of a safety structure, unstructured social support, and a lack of financial resources in their community further discourage low-income women from using entrepreneurship as a means of obtaining economic empowerment. Women who wish to start their own enterprises encounter a lack of skills and resources. While historical factors like discrimination, abuse and violence perpetrated by older generations, stigma, and self-stigma can all have a detrimental effect on a person’s agency or self-efficacy in starting and running a business, this problem is particularly pervasive among Kenyan women who live in urban slums. This fosters and sustains a culture of normalized sexual and gender-based violence. It has many harmful consequences, including as intergenerational defilement, child marriages, sex and food for pads, and teen pregnancies. We want to address the intersection between poverty and GBV. Usikimye aims to bridge the economic gap for women entrepreneurs in Kenya’s low-income communities by providing them with access to business training, incubation, institutional financing, acceleration, market access, and nurturing systems that enable these businesses to thrive while also addressing gender inequities such as SGBV and SRHR