Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organisation Kisumu chapter has said they will not play second fiddle in the August general election.
Chapter chairperson Caren Akech Oloo said they do not want the organisation to be used as a tool or a stepping stone to power and later kicked out.
She said they will engage aspirants, both women and men, and ask them what they will do for all women across the country.
Akech said the whole team will then decide who they will support together and will not declare support blindly.
“We don’t want Maendeleo to be used as a tool or a stepping stone to power and after that we are kicked out and nobody wants to think about us. We have changed. This is a new Maendeleo,” she said.
“It’s not about the women representative positions we will go for, but we will have women vying across all the positions within country”.
She was speaking during the end of a training programme on Climate-Smart Agriculture for Maendeleo ya Wanawake members in Kisumu in collaboration with Lilo Foods.
Twenty-five women, who are small-scale farmers, were trained.
“We take cognizant that women are the ones who are mostly engaged in farming activities. We therefore need to create innovative ways to teach and train them so that they can be able to pick up,” she said
Akech said they are concerned that most young people are not engaging in agriculture in rural areas.
“We are seeing how we can engage with young people to be attracted to agriculture,” she said.
The training, she said, will be cascaded to the grassroots level.
Edited by A.N
