Meet Fedis

Meet Fedis Baya Katsui.

She lives with her husband and children in one of Kenya’s poorest regions. Their land is their only asset; acres of sandy soil surround their mud house. Like most families in rural Africa, Fedis and her husband rely on subsistence farming to survive.

Drought plagues their degraded land. Fedis works extremely hard to grow maize and cassava, but traditional food crops often fail. In the end, the family earns roughly $300 a year. With that income, Fedis cannot afford school fees for her children; she cannot visit a doctor when her daughter is sick.

Desperate, Fedis says she cuts down indigenous trees to sell as firewood and charcoal. Her neighbors do the same thing. Today, most of the trees in the village have disappeared. The bare earth is growing even drier, and desertification threatens farms.

Fedis is caught in a vicious cycle. Poverty wipes out opportunities for her children and drives environmental destruction. Without an alternative livelihood, poverty grows deeper.

Help Fedis