Nanyuki Spinners and Weavers

Nanyuki town is a major wool-producing area in Kenya where favourable weather conditions make it ideal for sheep rearing and raising.

A women’s self-help project – the Nanyuki Spinners and Weavers - founded in 1977 had been training poor, windowed and single women living in the surrounding villages of Nanyuki town in the crafts of spinning, knitting and weaving. Using locally available raw materials from the Mount Kenya Highlands, women create beautiful carpets, shawls, cardigans, throws, pullovers, scarves, and bed covers in different designs.

The crafts cooperative had made great strides over the decades, enabling 282 women to become self-reliant, educate their children and even acquire land to build their homes. However, the existing infrastructure was insufficient to target and train more women and youth, which hindered scaling up the capacity of the crafts production.

We firmly believe in empowering women through skills training to improve their capabilities and pave the way for new income-generation opportunities while also facilitating their participation in the formal labour market.

This comprehensive approach towards developing an ecosystem in which women’s full potential is realised, led us to implement a skills development training programme in October 2020 in the Kenyan village of Nanyuki in collaboration with UAE-based non-profit, The Big Heart Foundation.

Women were instructed in the processes of spinning, knitting, dyeing, and weaving wool under the guidance of the crafts cooperative, Nanyuki Spinners and Weavers. Apart from the construction of a new workshop the project also covers all expenses of materials and meals provided to women during the training period. The humanitarian project is also supporting the education of 12 orphan children by providing their tuition fees.