Raising and selling goats allows Rhoda to have milk for her family and additional income to support her small clothing business.
Rhoda, 64, lives in an impoverished village in southeastern Kenya where her main economic activities include farming and raising livestock. She plants corn and beans, and keeps a few goats to provide milk for her grandchildren. But because Rhoda’s village receives little rainfall, reliable crop production is quite difficult, and caring for livestock in the extreme dry climate is also challenging.
Rhoda has earned money selling goats, allowing her extra income for her sewing business.
Rhoda often hoped that Samaritan’s Purse staff would come to her village and begin the kind of livelihood projects that they were leading in other nearby communities. So she was thrilled when she learned that our teams were finally coming to her village. Through our program, she received three female goats and a male goat for breeding. She also participated in our livestock training, which equipped her to take better care of her goats.
“Before you came to our village, I did not know that the goats must be attended in order to improve their productivity and health. We really learned a lot,” she said.
The goats are now providing plenty of milk and nutrition for Rhoda and her family. She’s even been able to sell one goat and use a portion of the income to add a cement floor in the nearby market where she sells and repairs clothing. She used the remaining funds to purchase additional inventory for her clothing business. These economic opportunities would not have been possible without the extra income Rhoda generated from the Samaritan’s Purse livelihood project.
When our team met Rhoda, she was already a Christian and was attending church regularly in her village. But the project has helped her grow in her faith. She has learned more about Jesus Christ through screenings of the Jesus Film showed in the village by our staff. She said she’s also regularly reading the Bible that we gave her.
The project has helped her trust God more as she’s experienced firsthand His provision and His power to answer prayer.
“We were so delighted when we received the goats, as indeed that was our prayer that had taken more than a year to be answered.”
Rhoda’s favorite Scripture is Psalm 23 because she said it “gives hope whenever she faces any hardship.”
