Global
Aniga Women Initiative
The Aniga Women Initiative is a women-led Community Based Organisation based in rural Kisumu County, on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Childhood malnutrition, and HIV/AIDS are common in the area, and the organisation works to empower the women, many of them widows, to improve their health and help them gain economic independence.
Global Footsteps has a longstanding link with Kenya, because Kisumu is a Friendship Town for Cheltenham. Our projects with the Aniga Women are initiated and led by the women, and are helping them build economic independence that addresses climate change. We are aware that communities who have contributed the least to climate breakdown such as this one, are on the frontline of its effects. In recent years rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable, leading to both flooding and drought. For the local farmers and smallholders, at best this leads to uncertainty about when to plant, and at worst, to crop failure or the devastation of flooding.
Farming For The Future
Our current project is run by the Aniga Women and supports small scale farmers in the Kisumu area, who are increasingly frustrated by erratic weather patterns that results in crop failures/destruction and exposes them to food insecurity and poverty.
Previous Projects
Original Cookstoves Project
This project, in conjunction with UK based CO2Balance, aimed to provide up to 1000 families in Kisumu, Kenya with highly efficient cook stoves, saving firewood, reducing CO2 production and providing significant health benefits…
Cookstoves Briquettes Project
After the success of the original cookstoves project we have moved towards supporting a project for healthier and more efficient cookstoves using briquettes as fuel. This project is also in association with the…
Local Projects
Sahara Saheli
This group of women living and working in Cheltenham, comes under our umbrella. It is a multi-cultural women’s group open to women of all ages, which supports and promotes integration and friendship.
Sahara Saheli meet weekly on Tuesdays from 10.30 to 12.30 at the Quaker Meeting House in Warwick Place, Cheltenham. .
All women are welcome regardless of background, culture or religion. The current group includes women from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Algeria, England, Turkey, with a mixture of religions.
The women are friendly and supportive. Anyone with problems or issues is pointed in the right direction to get help or support.
Most weeks someone comes in to share information about services or interests. Other weeks there is crafting, or just chatting. There is always tea/coffee and biscuits, and food shares on special occasions.
All women welcome. Just turn up. You will definitely be made to feel welcome. Cost is just 50p a week.
Foodloose
Little Footsteps
Little Footsteps, the local international parent and toddler group, started life as a Global Footsteps initiative and is now run independently.
