About Mifuko Trust
Mifuko Trust is a women's aid and advocacy organization founded in 2012. We strongly believe in the importance of empowering women to promote the entire community's well-being. We work together with 40 women's self-help groups in rural southeastern Kenya, reaching about 1300 low-income families and 60 villages. The work has a positive impact on the lives of about 8,000 women, men, and children.
Members of the Mifuko Trust women's groups produce baskets for the fair-trade company Mifuko and are also small-scale farmers. The work of Mifuko and Mifuko Trust complement each other, as Mifuko creates jobs and livelihoods for the self-help groups, while Mifuko Trust strengthens the well-being, resilience, and participation of women and their communities, for example through WASH and Grow! Project.
How to support our work?
There are many ways to support our work as a business. One way to contribute is through financial support like donations. Since 2021, Mifuko Trust has been part of Chloé’s Women Forward -program, and Chloé is one of our main supporters. Handsome, a Korean high-fashion house, donated a portion of its profits from Mifuko product sales to Mifuko Trust.
As a customer of Mifuko Ltd, you can support us easily by purchasing Tumaini bird ornaments with your order, as all the profits of the Tumaini birds go to Mifuko Trust. Genelec, a Finnish-based speaker company, supported us in 2023 by purchasing 300 Tumaini birds.
One option to support our work is to purchase a photo by Sanna Saastamoinen-Barrois from the photography collection “Weavers”. The collection portrays women like Janet Nzomo (in the picture on the left) who make their living through cultivating land and handcraft, captured amid their daily life and environment. The photographic works tell a tale of the effects of climate change and the strength of a community in navigating and surviving those effects.
How do we use donations?
Most of our funding comes from institutional donors, at the moment the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland. However, we need a minimum of 7,5 percent of the funding to come from private donors (individuals and companies) and a minimum of 7,5 is a voluntary work contribution. With the donations from private donors, we are able to cover the self-funding part, scale up the project activities, and strengthen the sustainability of the results. You can read more about some results of our projects on our website.
Through donations, we've been able to undertake various initiatives that align with our mission of empowering communities and promoting sustainability. For instance, the implementation of remote sensing technology in partnership with SoilWatch to investigate the progress of our WASH and Grow! project in Makueni, Kenya was funded by Mifuko Ltd as a carbon offset.
Back in November 2022, we planted 1650 trees with women: Globe Hope donated 1500 and Mifuko Ltd 150. Despite challenges posed by unsuccessful rain seasons in 2022 and early 2023, an amazing 1013 trees are still growing today. Supporting the work of planting trees by artisans demonstrates corporate responsibility by empowering local communities, promoting biodiversity, and mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration efforts. The enthusiasm of women for tree planting has been remarkable: almost 19,000 trees have been grown by spring 2024!
Furthermore, our water tank project in 2023, was supported by private donors. In the future, our goal is to continue empowering women through initiatives led by our main partner Mifuko Women Development CBO, partly funded by privately raised funds.
Contact details
Don't hesitate to contact us if you're interested in learning more about our work and exploring ways in which your company could support our initiatives.
Chair of Mifuko Trust & CEO of Mifuko Ltd
Minna Impiö
+358505932044
minna.impio@mifuko.fi
Project Manager of Mifuko Trust in Finland
Anita Lintula
+358 45 783 430 62
anita.lintula@mifukotrust.org