Success Stories
News and Events
Agnes
Agnes is a participant in the Kibera Women's Group. She is HIV positive, widowed and a mother of four children, three girls and one boy.
Agnes lost her husband last year to an AIDS-related illness. Shortly after that, Agnes fell ill. The women in her cooperative group grew increasingly concerned. As she grew sicker, her children had no one to care for them. Agnes' small business was their only source of income and when she became ill, it was left unattended. Her profits were her family's only means of purchasing food, and as the days went by, Agnes became weaker and the children hungrier.
Agnes' in-laws intervened without her consent, placing her children in separate homes to work as domestic servants. Their lives were quickly taking a turn for the worse.
Through loans from the cooperative and support from individuals within her women’s group, Agnes was taken to a hospital where she received ARV medicine and soon became stronger. Her children were retrieved from forced labor and returned to school. Pangea loaned Agnes the money for a new home and provided solar-powered lights, allowing the children to study in the evenings.
Her small vegetable business is back on its feet and she is repaying her loans and her colleagues in the women's group.
In our last meeting, the children were asked about their studies and their career dreams. One aspires to be a doctor and two others hope to become teachers. Her son hopes to become a football player.
