On June 13, 2022, the UC Davis Curiosity Blog featured research led by MRR Innovation Lab director Michael Carter that connects hope to a better future for women in rural Kenya.
by Michael Carter, Andrew Hobbs, Nathan Jensen, Sam Owilly
Read this blog about how Family Insurance, with its special focus on women’s risks and responsibilities, increased demand for insurance relative to conventional index-based livestock insurance.
In Samburu, Kenya, MRR researchers are testing "Family Insurance," which they designed to respond to women's needs in taking care of their families during drought.
On June 7, 2021 UC Davis Magazine featured MRR Innovation Lab research in arid northern Kenya that pairs a graduation program for women with insurance against drought.
This season, the UC Davis Unfold Podcast features MRR Innovation Lab research in northern Kenya that pairs a prominent poverty graduation program with index insurance to keep pastoralist families from falling so deep into poverty that they have no way to recover.
New research supported by USAID is learning whether investments in broadly based resilience helps families to withstand even this completely unexpected and global shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Kenya, the heavy, extended short rains into 2020 have led to flooding for pastoralists in the north, while further south farmers have struggled with drying their harvest and planting under threat of huge swarms of locusts. Climate adaptation and resilience are critical as extreme weather becomes more common across Eastern Africa.
SimPastoralist is a digital app the MRR Innovation Lab is using in northern Kenya to explain index-based livestock insurance while collecting data that can help design insurance that responds better to women’s needs.
Poverty graduation programs, which transfer assets and skills, can set women on a path toward higher income and greater empowerment at home, but in the arid rural parts of northern Kenya drought can force them to liquidate their gains so the family can survive.
On March 7, 2017, USAID's online hub Agrilinks featured a new AMA Innovation Lab project that use a randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the impacts of combining programs that offer training, support and aid with affordable insurance to reduce chronic poverty.
