Nashetu-E-Maa
Practical Action
Maasai women do not usually benefit from secondary education and would not normally choose
to study construction subjects. Practical Action’s project explicitly aimed to train young women
in craft subjects. Practical Action staff and local women faced practical and cultural obstacles
such as a lack of facilities for women at the training centre, the cultural unacceptability of
women travelling alone or leaving their domestic responsibilities.
Training ‘on the job’ is therefore critical in supplementing the formal training efforts especially
as a means to including women, enhancing their skills and achieving further outreach into the
local community of self-help, female builders.
Learning in practice, building homes to demonstrate options
A programme of construction was devised with project
partners and beneficiaries to refine technologies and to
promote improved housing options. Establishing linkages with
individuals and community based organisations was a primary
concern to ensure Practical Action’s small team of staff could
have the biggest impact possible.
Participants from women’s groups, and local artisans chosen
by them, were trained by Practical Action staff in the skills
and techniques required to plan and manage the construction
process. This process begins with choices being made about
the design and technologies to be used; the planning of
activities; estimating quantities; purchasing and transporting
materials; employing artisans and engaging family,
neighbours, and friends to build the structure and apply the
finishes.
Practical Action aimed to ensure that benefits accrued to
trainees from both the process and the content of training.
Programmes were designed to involve as many stakeholders
as possible whilst keeping in mind that women were the
primary target beneficiaries of the project.
Women’s groups would themselves identify who was to take
part in the training sessions and who was to benefit from the
house building itself. The demonstration house built during
training would belong to someone who was chosen based on
Maasai women being trained
whilst preparing and moulding
rammed earth walling. Photos:
Practical Action / Neil Cooper.
the criteria derived by members of the community:
• having no source of income;
• having no member of family working and supporting the family;
• owning less than 10 cows and 5 goats;
• being a widow/widower with no income and no animals;
• being orphaned children, below 18 years, with no inherited wealth;
• being an old, childless spinster with no animals;
• suffering from mental illness;
• being blind with no source of income;
• having a family of over 7 children and 3 wives with
In training sessions representatives from several local groups would attend and participate in
exchange visits to other local sites to see alternative designs and technologies, to hardware
merchants to gain knowledge of market prices and materials availability. Staff would discuss the
benefits and techniques of new construction methods and would undertake, with participants,
the complete process of house building from laying out the foundations through to applying the
final finishes.
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