Soklo Village

FAST FACTS:

Village Location: HOMA BAY COUNTY

# of Villagers: 1200-1400

Village Started: SEPTEMBER 2024

# of Households Surveyed: 125

# of Villagers Who Started in the CHEC: 125 

Graduation Date: May 2025

# Graduated from Health Training: 124

# of Participants in Economic Training: 124

Primary Economic Groups: Agriculture

Soklo is GHC's 6th CHEC community, and one of the most remote: it sits on Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria, Homa Bay County. GHC conducted baseline surveys with 125 households in September 2024, uncovering serious challenges with clean water access, financial literacy, healthcare, and widespread gender-based violence. Social disunity made collective action especially hard. And yet, all 125 surveyed households joined the CHEC.

The table bank has 37,500 KSH available to loan out, and merry-go-round savings groups are running consistently. Members completed both the health curriculum and financial literacy training. Kitchen gardens are expanding across the village, and several members are already selling produce locally. Sanitation and household improvements are happening too, funded by members' own savings.

The village's first collective income project, hybrid cassava production, is set to launch with the August rains.

Soklo is organizing land and coordinating through its governance structures to prepare for community-wide cassava planting. This is a meaningful step: from individual household progress toward a shared group project, built on two years of savings discipline and consistent participation.

Quinter, GHC's Project Officer on Mfangano Island, leads community radio segments carrying health, sanitation, and financial literacy messages across the island. The CHEC's reach in Soklo goes well beyond its 125 members.

Soklo's Sustainable Governance Committee completed the leadership curriculum and now coordinates land preparation, oversees savings records, and keeps sub-groups connected as the village moves into its first planting season. On a remote island, that local capacity is what makes everything else work.