FOUNDER HISTORY
CO FOUNDER & CEO
MR LOMNYACK
my Task is to Empower Maasai women to break the cycle of poverty
My name is Seuri,I am the second born in my family, I was born and raised in the Maasai community in Monduli Tanzania.
Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting Northern, central and southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania. The Maasai speak the Maa language. From growing up in this community, I have been experiencing people only depending on rearing livestock and growing crops for food and any other basic need for earning a living.
From observation I couldn’t see any other alternative where the Maasai people got food or anything else they needed other than agriculture and livestock. The huge problem with their source of need has been climate change. When I was growing up I saw the green land with enough water in my community. As time goes by, the climate of the country continues to change day by day or time by time. I once asked my grandfather why are all these changes happening? And he said “God is costing us because of all the sins that we have been doing in this world, people are watching each other,killing each other, Killing innocent children, and a lot of wars that is why God is upset. From experience I remember that we use to grow maize and harvest about 1000 kg per hectare in 2000 compared to now 2003 where we harvest 100 kg per hectare.Therefore my curiosity of knowing the current changes made me ask him the second question how was everything about agriculture in the past years compared to now because as current people are not getting enough food? He said in the past years there were few farms and the grassy land was big, people did not cut down trees, That means our livestock had enough grass that resulted in people getting enough milk to drink enough food and that is why livestock and wildlife had enough land to stay on.
When I was little I use to see different kind of wildlife like Zebra, Maasai Giraffe, wildebeest , gazelle, elephants, ostrich, Buffalo Lions, and Cheetah around my home place. As for now the population has increased, that led people to establish more land for agriculture and resulted in all the wildlife to run away as well as shortening pastures for grazing livestock. I came to realize that the more the people are cutting down trees and clearing land for agriculture, for building houses, for making timbers for sale, the shorter the rain it becomes. Without rain the maasai life becomes even harder and harder because they will not harvest anything from the farms, their cows will die when there is insufficient water and graze to eat ( during dry season). As an example I recall in 2008/ 2009,2015/16 and 2021 a lot of families lost their livestock because of shortage of rain which resulted in poverty in the entire community. The effects of climate change have mostly affected the Maasai community because 80% of them are not educated, which means they are not employed or get any other means of sustaining their family needs during drought season.
Due to this kind of hardship in my community it made me think and rethink of the alternative solution of poverty in my community. In 2015 I came up with the idea of starting a project to help families get at least 2 meals a day and the most basic needs among them. I prioritised making a women’s project because from my childhood women have been facing challenges when it comes to taking care of the families when you compare it with the men. Women have been taking all the responsibilities in most of the families in my community despite the fact that they do not have anywhere to get money. I thought that starting this project will support the majority of women to get some money for buying food, paying school fees for their children and providing the families with the most needed things.
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