Agnes’ Story of Financial Independence

Imagine, you are a smart girl with big dreams, but you have to leave school because your family can’t afford to pay tuition. Isn’t that unfair?

Agnes Wairimu Kagiri is 34 years old, married, and a mother of three who had to re-define herself and her future several times. Since she joined the Basic Entrepreneur Training (BET) in March 2021, she has not only managed to establish successful micro enterprises in farming, Agnes also is a woman with leadership qualities, wanting to give something back to her community: She already started a self-help group by herself and quickly advanced to become the secretary not only for the group, but was also recently elected as secretary of her community-based organization (CBO).

While talents are equally well distributed all over the world, not everyone gets the opportunity to develop and use them. A lot of potential just need someone to guide and show how to organize those resources profitably. That’s why the Hilti Foundation started a project-based cooperation with Hand in Hand International in 2017 and implemented the powerful educational Basic Entrepreneur Training (BET) in rural East Africa.

The program teaches basic entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy as well as best practice on livestock farming. It also emphasizes on women's decision-making power in the household and climate-resilient practices, such as topsoil regeneration, biodiversity, and rainwater harvesting. Its overarching goal is to enable members of self-help groups within 12 months to start a micro-business and generate sustainable income of more than USD 1.90 per day. Based on the BET program’s success, the Hilti Foundation has decided to launch “Enterprise Scale-Up”, a project focusing on those microentrepreneurs who have already gone through the base program with ambitions to invest and profitably grow their enterprises.