UNEMPLOYMENT

In Kenyan slums, up to 70% of youth are jobless, with women facing
additional barriers in earning
an income.

HEALTH

Millions of families in Kenya burn biomass for cooking which emits toxic fumes that kill more children than malaria.

ENVIRONMENT

Kenya’s forests have been depleted by 83% in the last 50 years, primarily for fuel, which accounts for around 20% of all black carbon emissions.

We have created a youth-powered sales network that trains and employs disadvantaged youth and women in Kenyan slums to distribute life-improving products in hard-to-reach slum markets.

By offering training and job opportunities we provide unemployed youth and women with an opportunity to work their  way out of poverty. At the same time, this door-to door distribution network of youth and women from slum communities brings clean-energy products that improve the health and quality of life in these same communities. LivelyHoods products also prevent harmful emissions, reducing deforestation and climate change.

168,260

lives improved

through training, job creation,
and product distribution

87,361

cars taken off the road

in equivalent carbon dioxide
emissions avoided

$16,973,425

in customer savings

by using clean-energy
products

LivelyHoods was created by Tania Laden and Maria Springer, two young women from California, in search of a sustainable solution to the problems of unemployment and access to clean energy in Nairobi's slums.

Through their initial research in the heart of Kawangware slum, with a small group of youth from the community, Tania and Maria realised that, though there were significant resources and innovation focused on creating products that would improve the lives of the world’s poor, there was a huge bottleneck in getting these products into the hands of the people who need them.

LivelyHoods was launched in 2011 as a U.S based non-profit organization and a Kenyan social enterprise, to fund an environmental and livelihoods program, which trains and employs door-to-door sales agents distributing life-changing products in slum communities.