The Boma Project

Prosperity with Dignity

Reflections for Father’s Day

Our amazing co-founder Kura Omar wrote this thoughtful piece about what it means to be a man working to empower women in the drylands of East Africa, and his hopes for his own children this Father’s Day. While our program is gender-focused on helping women overcome extreme poverty, we are deeply grateful to the fathers,Read More

The Data Dilemma: Making Measurement Matter

Perspective from a Gender-Focused Poverty Intervention Program –The BOMA Project and Vera Solutions Accountability for nonprofits means many things: financial transparency and disclosure, to show that they are good stewards of the funding they rely on to execute their programs. Accountability to their partners who are helping them scale or innovate in their space. AccountabilityRead More

Peery Family Foundation Commits $1 Million to the BOMA Project

Support from grantee-centric, forward-thinking foundations and organizations means all the difference in the world to growing nonprofits like BOMA. As we scale our poverty graduation model across the drylands of East Africa to reach one million women and children by 2022, we are grateful for partners like the Peery Family Foundation and others who believeRead More

Making a Difference for Mothers

This Mother’s Day, BOMA is celebrating a major milestone. We have now impacted 105,624 women and children since we launched in 2009. Participants in our two-year, holistic poverty graduation program are earning incomes, feeding their families, accumulating savings, learning valuable skills, and breaking the cycle of extreme poverty. Please read our 2017 Annual Report here to learnRead More

The Proven Solution to Ending Extreme Poverty

Do poverty graduation programs increase resilience for ultra-poor populations better than other types of interventions? Findings from a 3-year randomized control trial confirm that long-term positive effects of graduation outpace those of cash or asset transfer only. Innovations for Poverty Action released the study this January: “A multi-faceted program comprising a grant of productive assets,Read More

BOMA Study: Evidence of Impact on Women’s Empowerment in Northern Kenya

As part of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Putting Women and Girls at the Center of Development Global Grand Challenges grant, we recently completed a study to determine BOMA’s impact on participants in our gender-focused program for ultra-poor women. Specifically, we wanted to explore whether increased economic power had led to corresponding increases inRead More

Hotter, Drier, Hungrier: How Global Warming Punishes the World’s Poorest

Writing in the New York Times this week, Somini Sengupta highlights the escalating crisis in some of the world’s driest regions. Climate change is resulting in a “new normal” for people living in the remote arid regions of eastern Africa. Droughts have always been a part of life in these areas, but they were relievedRead More

The Greatest Need. The Greatest Return. Why We Put Women at the Center of Our Program.

    This International Women’s Day, we wanted to share our thoughts about what empowering women means to us, and to the world. Since we started our resiliency-building poverty graduation program in the drought-stricken regions of eastern Africa, The BOMA Project has focused on women. Why? Two reasons. The first is that women—and children—disproportionately bearRead More