When Mr Simon King’ara, a businessman in Ruiru, decided to assist street children start a chicken business project about three years ago, he never knew that what he was setting out to do what would turn out to be an exciting journey of transformation.
The initiative has been such as success that some of the former street children have gone on to start their own businesses.
Initially his intention was to just rehabilitate street children from the densely populated Githurai area. Now his dream has blossomed beyond his imagination. The former street children have not only been rehabilitated, they are now a group of promising entrepreneurs.
Mr King’ara’s initiative is a story of not only magnanimity and generosity but of resilience and ironclad determination to do good for the society.
At the beginning of the project, he spent Sh6,000 to buy 400 birds from a nearby farm at a cost of Sh15 each. He gave the birds to a group of eight former street boys and alcohol addicts to help them open a new leaf in their lives.
However, few weeks into the launch of the project, problems started to hit hard threatening to extinguish his dream. The project would be far from the walk in the park he had previously thought.
Out of the 400 birds, 150 of them were swept away by a strange disease. Mr King’ara was however undeterred and the setback though huge never killed his dream. “He got another 500 chicks, out of which 30 died,” said 37-year-old Martin Ngugi who has been in the farm located at Kabati in Muranga County since July 2014.
The 720 remaining chickens did well as the group had learnt from the costly lessons and gained skills on how to take care of them. Their promising effort was noticed by their supplier who added them another 400 chicks on credit, bringing the total number of birds to 1,120.
Then their fortunes started looking up from there. Six months into the venture, the youth sold 400 chickens on both retail and wholesale at a cost of between Sh450 and Sh800, fetching an income of about Sh240,000. They used part of the proceeds to pay their supplier and buy 300 more chicks. They also started rearing pigs to diversify their farming activities.
A few months later, they sold another 500 birds at between Sh400 and Sh700, and bough an equal number of chicks.
Mr Ngugi, who used to work as a casual labourer at Mwiki Kasarani, said they resolved that they would be replacing sold chickens with an equal number of new chicks to make the business sustainable.
Mr John Mburu, a former street boy who used to shuttle between Mwihoko in Githurai and Kayole estate scavenging for food joined the venture together with his three colleagues two years ago. They have seen their lives gradually transformed. They can now afford to pay rent for decent houses. This is a far cry from the destitution and squalid conditions that defined their daily lives in the streets.
Most of their chicken is sold to hotels and markets in Thika town at both retail and wholesale. Mr Kin’gara stills plays a crucial role in the project, but his main aim is to see the young people stand on their own feet. He helps in marketing, financial management, book keeping and savings. He says the young people have learnt a lot and they can largely handle their affairs on their own.
“Whatever they earn belongs to them and I only come in when the sales involve huge amount of money because I want them to have the entrepreneurship skills in them as well as a saving culture considering they were street boys,” Mr King’ara says.
Mr Mburu says they collect between 40 and 70 eggs a day which are sold in shops and hotels at a cost of Sh20, which translate to between Sh800 and Sh1,400 daily.
A veterinary officer visits the farm regularly to train the street children on the best chicken-rearing practices.