Earning Social Capital Credits through Environmental Clean-Up and Waste Collection: A Manyatta Savings & Loan Group

“Social Capital Credits can act as a new ‘currency’ to help harness and trade the social capital of communities towards better housing and infrastructure, and towards more equitable cities.”

-excerpted from a white paper by WSI board member Geeta Mehta

Here in Kisumu, the Alice Visionary Foundation Project has been inspired by the implementation of Social Capital Credits programs (SoCCs) in communities around the world as a means of encouraging social and environmental responsibility while earning desired goods and services.
Some notes from our first SoCCs pilot:

– The women-led “Unique Movement” GS&L decided to start their own SoCCs program in the Manyatta Gesoko area of Kisumu that would focus on environmental clean-up and waste collection, a long-neglected priority in that community. The initiative has already generated significant excitement among local residents.

– The Unique Movement members chose a SoCCs Manager from among their membership whom they resolved to pay a small stipend of $130/month; the Manager also has the opportunity to earn up to 800 individual SoCCs credits, or “i-SoCCs.”

– Unique Movement has engaged the services of Mr. Dickens Ochieng, of the GASIA POA Waste Collection Company, to collect the waste and teach the community how to sort plastics and metals for scrap, as well as other materials involved in waste separation at the source.

– The Unique Movement members greatly impressed the landlords with their diligence in cleaning up both open and private space in their community. The women thought that if they could make a compelling case, they might persuade the landlords to allow them to fence off some small portion of the landlords’ property that the women had cleaned, for the purpose of planting an urban garden where they might grow fruits, herbs and vegetables for household consumption. Together, the women mustered the nerve to go speak with the landlords, who said YES!!! — and now the women are happily planting and tending their own first community garden.

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