The Ng'ombeni-Pesa Community Based Organization has been formed. They are a neighboring slum to Bangladesh in Mombasa County and live in a devastating situation. Ng'ombe means cow in Kiswahili and Ng'ombeni means the place of the cows. Sadly there have been no cows in this area for nearly 20 years, and it now forms an area with the cheapest housing in Mombasa. (No utilities, and poorly built mud houses, with rusting iron sheets.) But there is a vibrant group of (mostly) women business owners who want to change all this.
At our 3rd large scale community meeting on April 18th 2015 we talked with a potential 50 new members of the group that represent schools, churches and many small businesses. At the meeting four pieces of art that had been based on requests from the community were presented. The art was created by our own Carol Opondo, the artists for Bangla-Pesa, and the results are stunning. There are four themes for the four denominations of vouchers that will be used as the community currency. The themes are community, environment, education and economy; since the community currency ties them all together to improve livelihoods.
