Savings and Internal Lending Community Programme Strategies on Sustainability of Rural Women Livelihood Projects in Suna East Sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

Accessibility to financial institutions is commonly restrained or unavailable for the needy in the rural setting, as the distance to cover in order to access the nearest commercial institution, micro-finance organization or credit union is always a distance and transport expenses are so high. In promoting women empowerment, Catholic Relief Services established the savings and internal lending community programme to improve financial accessibility to rural women for livelihoods. The study investigated the influence of savings and internal lending community programme strategies on sustainability of rural women livelihood projects in Suna East Sub-County and the guiding objectives for the study were: assess how financial services influences sustainability of rural women livelihood projects in Suna East Sub-County, Kenya; to determine how capacity building influences sustainability of rural women livelihood projects in Suna East Sub-County, Kenya; to establish how social bonds influences sustainability of rural women livelihood projects in Suna East Sub-County, Kenya; and to examine how performance monitoring influences sustainability of rural women livelihood projects in Suna East Sub-County, Kenya. Joint Liability Theory will be adopted in the research. The research work assumed descriptive survey research design, and questionnaires and interview schedules applied for data collection. The research target population was 180 women SILC beneficiaries and 1 field officer. Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination was applied to get the study‘s 170 as the sample size, while 1 field agent was purposively sampled. The structured questionnaire was self-administered by the researcher and interview guides to the field agent. Data obtained was analyzed descriptively and inferentially by assistance of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software and the findings displayed in tabular form. Content analysis was applied in analyzing the qualitative data. The study found that financial services, capacity building, social bonds and performance monitoring had a strong positive influence on sustainability of rural women livelihood projects in Suna East Sub-County, Kenya. Thus, concluded that SILC programme strategies effect on the sustainability of rural women livelihood projects was found to be significant. The research recommends that SILC management should actively promote SILC programme strategies for sustainability, as well as the government of Kenya need to formulate a policy protecting and guiding the operations of SILC programme. The study further suggested further studies on the environmental aspect of the programme, as well as similar to this study but in other constituencies for results comparison.