The Sweetest Way To Change the World
“Poverty stops with me.”
Inspired by the hard work and transformation of their daughters as Girls On Fire Leaders, mothers are finding solutions for the lack of money to pay for their daughter’s school fees.
Sixty pioneering Mommas On Fire in a rural region off the coast of Kenya are breaking barriers as women beekeepers. Profits from their burgeoning honey business will pay to educate their girls. In addition to raising family income, their hard work will also support community-led conservation projects such as solar power, irrigation and reforestation.
The Mommas On Fire Beekeeping Project will increase community involvement and status for the women, help them invest in their health care, send their children to school and reduce their environmental impact. The project will also spread sweetness, as the MoF Apiary will become a free training center to over 300 neighboring mothers who wish to become beekeepers themselves.
Bees promise a brighter future but they need your help to get started with the first 50 hives. We’d love for you to bee our first supporters!
Adopt-A-Hive and Educate Girls
When you Adopt-A-Hive, you become an investor in change. Here’s how:
Hives, Honey and Educated Girls
We are purchasing high quality hives that will produce more honey and endure at least 10 years longer than traditional hives. We’ve already secured contracts from local partners to purchase our honey in local markets. Projecting conservative profits for ten years, given the cost of secondary education, each hive promises a full education to four girls.
Hive House and Ownership
We are building an Apiary to house over 100 hives this year. For the first six months, we will have 50 hives housed there with live bees, to be used as a learning center for budding beekeepers in the region. All land, the Apiary, all hives, inspection and harvest equipment will be owned by Mommas On Fire, a registered CBO (Community-based Organization) in Kenya.
Each MOF will have an opportunity to use profits from the first harvests to own two hives, placed on their own farm.
Empowerment and Entrepreneurial Skills
Girls On Fire Leaders provides women with the skills they need to be successful entrepreneurs over the long term. MOF members receive training in the essential skills of enterprise management, record keeping, project supervision, monitoring and evaluation. We consistently focus on strengthening and expanding their knowledge in personal and community leadership through monthly empowerment sessions.
Conservation and Reforestation
We ask women to “pay back” in the form of conservation gains, which means they commit to lead projects such as village cleanups, tree plantings, watershed restoration work, and environmental education outreach. When other local people see and participate in these activities, community attitudes toward conservation improve. We will plant over 1,000 bee-loving, indigenous trees this year.
impact
In the next 5 years, together we will be creating these impact outcomes to change lives, communities and the environment.
Educate 500 Girls (through four years of Secondary School)
Support 5 community-led conservation and development projects
Increase livelihoods of Families
Protect pollination and native environments
increase food security
Increase childhood and family nutrition and health.
Community-led Climate Action that Fosters Girls, Bees and Biodiversity
Through the Ban-Ki Moon Centre for Global Citizens, our Program Lead Priscah Mongera was nominated out of hundreds of changemakers for the top 30 Under 30 EVWA (Elevating Voices of Women In Agriculture) Change Makers 2022 for the BE(E) The Change Project with our Mommas On Fire. We are empowering mothers to teach the wider community about beekeeping, the environment and biodiversity, including together with the youth will reforest (plant native trees) in a nearby forest that’s experienced degradation. It is through our intersectional approach that we are able to make a significant impact on girls’ education, women’s economic empowerment, food security and climate change, in both service implementation and influencing policy change.
The top down, siloed approaches to social and enironmental change do not work and excluding the people most affected by the climate crisis, women and girls in the global south, is having devastating outcomes.
Women Beekeepers, Breaking Taboos
Mommas On Fire are breaking taboos as they venture into beekeeping, which has traditionally been only for men. Societal and religious pressures regarding the “role of the woman” as well as traditional folklore have held women back but collectively they are breaking these taboos and gaining the support of influential men in the community, who can clearly see how this project benefits all.
We support, train, and elevate the voices of Mommas On Fire women while building their beekeeping, entrepreneurial and conservation knowledge, skills and experience to become fierce advocates for education and youth leadership.
By realizing the full potential of mothers working alongside their daughters, we can ensure that Kenya’s wild places will survive and through education, girls will thrive for generations to come.
THE PROTECTORS: Mothers step Up to Protect the Environment and Education for girls
Involving women in beekeeping will give them a voice, a position of leadership and economic clout within their families and communities where they currently hold little decision making power.
Women are the solution driver in the urgent crisis of protecting our planet. Ensuring food security and protecting daughters’ educational futures are the only sustainable ways forward.
Women are hungry to learn, to break taboos of female beekeepers and to educate the first generation of girls in their region. They are not waiting for someone to ‘save them’ anymore.
“It’s not just about going around teaching women, it's about learning from women from different villages, tribes, religions to be in solidarity in protecting our most precious resources, our planet and our girls.”
Meet The Mommas (and Grannies) On Fire!
