encouraging empathy for other life

A couple years ago, we built a Women's Work Center on an acre of land in the middle of Maasai Mara, Kenya, with the dream that one day it would become a cooperative enterprise for Maasai women. In 2024, the Women's Center blossomed! Women here have not had such opportunities before, and now they're earning an income for the first time in their lives, learning vocational and marketing skills, supporting their families, and keeping their kids in school. You can feel the joy and spirit when you walk in the room. The woman with me in the photo above is Hellen Nchoko, manager of the Center. As Hellen puts it, this micro-enterprise is "a testament to the power of community, resilience, and the unwavering spirit of women determined to uplift one another."

 

Building upon the women's astonishing beadwork arts, we added sewing to the Center in 2024, and they have mastered it. Among their products, the women are making high-quality sanitary kits to keep teen girls in school. When girls here get their period, they drop out of school at heartbreakingly high rates, and it also puts them at risk for early forced marriage, an end to hopes and dreams. Last year, the women made over 2000 kits, which we distributed to at-risk girls at local schools and in 2025 hope to make 1000s more, as the need is great. I wish you could see the fulfillment on the faces of these women doing this meaningful work, and how happy the girls are to receive the kits.​

​

​​Literacy and education continue to be one of our pillars at Oliveseed, with a new school library and second children’s library in the Maasai Mara. Our legacy program in Morocco is going strong too, as our Short Story Competition there went national last year. Young people from rural areas across Morocco wrote stories that weave family life and Amazigh heritage, and we published a beautiful anthology. Our Competition was featured in the Marrakech English Book Festival, and in an exciting turn of events two of the students were honored with the Goldex Young Writer's Prize! Imagine two girls from the desert being recognized in this way and speaking to an international audience.

What better way to inspire literacy among the next generation than a platform on which to develop and share their thoughts in writing? We followed up with an Essay Competition in both Kenya and Morocco with young people writing about challenges they see in the world they're inheriting, bringing even more power to their written word. This turns into leadership.

  ​​

Everything we do is made possible by the support of people who care. Three times last year, safari visitors from the U.S. in the Maasai Mara saw first-hand how difficult life is for people and sought a meaningful way to help — and they did. The community referred them all to us. With the help of one group, we built three community water projects bringing safe water to over 5000 people. With the support of the other two, we’re managing a refurb of one of the poorest schools in the region.

 

Now more than ever, we need to make positive change in our world — and we need to do it together. At Oliveseed, we are not giving up. We all know the state of affairs with government assistance for people in need collapsing. As a small organization on the ground, we're able to help people directly, with ripple effects far beyond what we can even imagine today. Please help if you can. We pledge that every dollar will make meaningful change for people who need it.

​

With sincere gratitude ~ Barb Mackraz, Executive Director ​​