Education Levels, Capacity Building and Sustainability of Women Self Help Groups Projects in Uasin Gishu County

Education level is a barrier to sustainability and development of Women Self Help Groups (WSHGs)in Kenya .The lowlevel of financial knowledge and skills in business can be portrayed through various ways such as poor investment choices, inability to budget for finances and mixing of domestic and business finances among many other ways that clearly indicate financial illiteracy. Despite all the financial empowerment initiativesmade by different stakeholders such as the government and various non-governmental organizationsto empower women and their businesses, the performance of women-owned entities/ventures is still wanting. Thisstudy aimed at exploring the role of education level and capacity building in on the sustainability of women self-groups in UasinGishu County, Kenya. The importance of education on development of women self-help groups and the influence of training on development of women self-helpgroups‟ project in UasinGishu County were the specific objectives. The study used sampling method and 310 women self-help group members as the appropriate sample size. The study adopted descriptive design. Data collection was done by using questionnaires, and the data collected was later analyzed. The main findings of this study established that most of the individuals running the self-help groups have only secondary school education and very few have not gone to secondary education level whereas very few have done post-secondary school education. This has to some extent affected the sustainability of the self-help groups within the study area. The study also found that various organizations such as NGOs as well as government of Kenya have helped the sustainability of such groups by capacity building through financial support as well as offering training to the group members. However, the study found that the support has not been adequate hence the groups projects have not been able to be sustained for long. The study recommend that more financial support as well as trainings are supposed to be given to the groups which have successfully been able to implement their projects and specifically the trainings should focus on how this groups can enhance its sustainability