Noontoto Women Group : Cooperation Partners and Networks

Noontoto Women Group

The first contact between Twiga and Noontoto Women Group (NWG) was made during the spring of 2002. NWG had by then existed as a group for some time, as an independent part of the organization Noontoto Farmers Self Help Group and not as a registered organization. Twiga and NWG started discussing different ways of cooperating, which lead to NWG being registered as an organization in the year of 2003.

NWG has 25 members, all women. The organization started as a self help group with women helping each other in their daily responsibilities and with problems in the daily life. The first few years, meetings were held in the homes of their members. Nowadays, they have a building partly for this purpose.

However, there have been some problems in the organization. The members have very limited knowledge of how to run an organization, which is the reason why NWG participated in organizational development courses as part of the Twiga project. Unfortunately, these courses haven’t had the effect we had hoped for and in order for the organization to function in a democratic manner, great changes need to be made.

Because of the problems in NWG and because NWG to a large extent appears to be influenced and driven by men, Twiga has chosen not to cooperate with NWG at the moment. We believe that there are better ways for us to work with equality and gender issues in Enkokidongoi.