Rapp resident trains women in Kenya to become farmers in fight against food insecurity
Rappahannock County resident Kit Goldfarb is preparing for another trip to Kenya in the coming days where she and a small team work with rural communities to embolden women and combat food insecurity.
Before moving to Rappahannock, she and her husband lived in Northern Virginia where she worked in public relations for technology start-ups for more than 20 years before going back to school at George Mason University to study global health in underdeveloped parts of the world. There she met Dr. Constance Gewa, a professor at the school and a Kenyan native, who would go on to help her to found their SANGO-Kenya nonprofit.
Goldfarb rst became interested in the topic a er traveling to Tanzania and Rwanda while in school and seeing rsthand the impacts of missing a growing season and how that can contribute to food insecurity. When she came to Rappahannock, she missed participating in that kind of work and reached back out to Gewa who was planning on a trip to Kenya. Goldfarb asked to tag along.
While there, they realized how much the people in rural Kenya wanted their help in learning to grow food. After returning to the states, they founded the nonprofit in an effort to provide agricultural training to women in African communities so that they can become equipped to sustain themselves.
The duo returned to Kenya in rural Kisumu County in 2020 in partnership with the country’s Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture to assist 19 women in one village. Their reach has since grown to include 70 women across two villages, and with more resources Goldfarb said they could reach even more people.
“It’s also about women’s empowerment, because the women are becoming the experts in the community,” she said. “And we’ve even had men come to some of the trainings and listen to the women because they’ve seen that the crops in the farms were more productive, the yields are greater and the crops are healthier.”
The 2020 trip, however, got cut short a er the pandemic reared its ugly head. But the team is mounting a return trip this November with the goals of conducting additional community outreach to expand their work into other areas and adding new programs to help farmers practice water irrigation in the semi-arid climate.
“It’s a very ambitious agenda, actually, from my perspective,” Goldfarb said.
A key to their operation’s success has been the relationships they’ve worked to build with members of the community. For Gewa, that comes a bit easier since she’s a native of the area, having grown up in a more urban area just an hour away from the villages. Many of the women they work with, she said, feel a bit more comfortable around her since she has a keen understanding of their language and culture.
“Because I have that understanding has really helped us … I always have to be cognizant that I do not live there every day,” Gewa said. “I don’t experience their lifestyle and their issues every day. And so I have to be open to listening and learning from them.”
She described the work they do as very “humbling.” “I’m a person who believes that every community, wherever they are, has something to give and something to improve — and [the villagers] know more about their community than anybody else,” Gewa said.
While Goldfarb isn’t a native, she’s formed several close relationships with women in the country and has remained in touch with some. She described the villagers as “warm” and very appreciative of the work she and the team do.
“We really believe that to be successful, it needs to be organic — not just [as in] no chemicals — but also grow from the culture and that it needs to be community based,” Goldfarb said of their mission.
All of the work they’ve done has been for free and with the help of donors, including Goldfarb's family and friends back in Virginia and in Rappahannock County.
“The generosity here has been really rewarding. As we grow, we’ll have to expand beyond that,” Goldfarb said.
KIT GOLDFARB: “It’s also about women’s empowerment, because the women are becoming the experts in the community.”