Catherine Chirchir overturned gender stereotypes, often prominent in rural farming areas, when she was elected the leader of her community farming group. She used her power to ensure the group’s success would have the greatest impact where it mattered to her most—the family.

In 2016, when Chirchir first joined the farming group, she had no idea what her role would be. She heard WE Charity was starting a farming collective in the community where she lived, Kipsongol, Kenya, to train community members on sustainable farming methods to attain higher yields. She was intrigued. Chirchir and her husband farmed maize on their one-acre plot of land, but it wasn’t consistently enough to provide for their family. The mother of seven decided to prioritize the training, balancing her other responsibilities of managing her household, farming corn and her role with the women’s group she belonged to. She decided if this meant more food for her family, she had to attend and see what she could learn.

Chirchir became a founding member of the Kipsongol Farmer’s Group. The group of 12, made up of men and women, were given a plot of land located near the school and, with irrigation from the newly installed borehole, got to work to turn the barren field into a thriving yield. Chirchir was an active member, never missing one of the scheduled days to work on the farm.

Every year, the group elected a farming executive of a chair, secretary, treasurer and discipline master, to ensure the farm was run well. In 2018, after two years helping bring the farm to life, Chirchir was nominated as chairperson, a position that would normally be reserved for men in a co-ed group. She said the members nominated her because they had seen her leadership skills in her women’s savings group, part of WE Charity’s opportunity program, where she was treasurer and formerly a chair. That experience gave her the confidence to take on the role of chairperson for the farm.

Initially, some members were unsure of Chirchir’s ability to lead. “The men were skeptical at first, but I knew I needed to lead by example. The men would ask, ‘What are we doing?’ So I would go and show them, we are going to plant like this, and because I was so confident they gave me respect and saw I knew what I was doing.” She proved she was the right person for the job.

As chair, Chirchir brought in new ideas that made the farm more successful—even suggesting planting tomatoes, a radical idea since they weren’t commonly farmed in the area, but it paid off. Soon they were planting other vegetables they hadn’t thought to try before. In 2019, when her term came to an end, Chirchir was elected treasurer of the group, and is now in charge of the income generated by the farm.

Her experiences at the farm are helping her shift gender roles at home. She wanted to start a kitchen garden to offset the cost of buying vegetables, but first she had to convince her husband to let her use part of their maize farm for vegetables. “I had the farm, but my husband did not like the idea of using part of it as a kitchen garden.”

Chirchir brought him to a training, where the WE Charity coordinator explained how much they could save if they grew vegetables at home instead of buying them, and how lucrative selling vegetables could be. That convinced him. They started planting kale, adding spinach, bananas and sugarcane soon after.