| dc.description.abstract | The study was carried out to find out the influence of Women Enterprise Fund on socio-economic empowerment of rural women of Moiben sub-county, UG County, Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives; To determine the influence of financial access to the socio-economic empowerment of rural women; To establish the influence of savings services offered by WEF on rural women socio-economic empowerment; To assess the influence of training and capacity building on socio-economic empowerment of rural women; And to examine the influence of information on promoting rural women socio-economic empowerment.This study would provide women an opportunity to create their own jobs and become entrepreneurs since opportunities of getting employment in either government, non government or a private organization is currently almost declining. Further, the study ensured that rural women come out of traditional subsistence farming to agricultural business and entrepreneurship. The target population was 290 rural women entrepreneurs who were accessible to the study. While the sample size was 87 this figure arrived at using simple random sampling. And purposive sampling technique to sample WEF government officers and group leaders with target population of 50 .The sample size was 15.The total target population was 340 but the sample size was 102. The study used both descriptive techniques to analyze data. The descriptive statistics and inferential was used and the mean, indicated the average performance of a group or a measure of some variable, and the standard deviation which indicates how to spread out a set of scores is around the mean. All data was analyzed at a level of significance of 95% and the degree of freedom depending on the particular case as was determined. Analysis was done using SPSS a computerized statistical package by encoding responses from questionnaires and interview guides. Presentation of this information was done using tables and bar graphs. Based on the findings of the study, the study made the following conclusions; there is low credit access from WEF since respondents were not fully benefiting from the credit being offered. Saving services offered by WEF improved socioeconomic status of rural women through generation of revenue from the savings, improving quality of life of employees, expanding business and being able to continue business operations. Training offered by WEF enabled the women gain business skills, awareness to business obligations and acquisition of management skills. However, lack of awareness concerning training programmes being offered by WEF is high in the area implying that WEF has not done enough in training its members. Respondents were unaware concerning promotion of markets, linkages and networks services offered by WEF thus there is poor information access to rural women entrepreneurs. The researcher recommended that micro finance institutions should change the practice of “group lending system” since members in a group cannot have the same thinking level, attitude and commitment as there are personal differences | en_US |
