When Amira Hussein moved from Isiolo to Nairobi in search of employment, she expected to land one immediately. After all, Nairobi is the ''land of opportunity''.

Amira is among seven million Kenyans who are unemployed and desperately looking for work.

Armed with her O-level certificate, the 23-year-old landed in Nairobi’s Korogocho slums, one of the largest slums surrounding the Kenyan capital, where 200,000 people live cramped together in just 1.5 square kilometres.

“I was invited to Nairobi by my cousin who lived in Korogocho. We had agreed she would host me before I got a job. The work search started a day after I got to Korogocho,” she says.

For the following three months, nothing was forthcoming.

Job-hunting spree

One day as she was on her job-hunting spree when she came across a group of Borana women who live in Korogocho.

They told her about Team Revolution, a youth empowerment group that has been training girls and women on small businesses in Korogocho.

The group was started in 2016 by Emily Onyango, a 28-year-old woman, after she underwent training and a challenge was thrown to her.

“After the training, you were to look for a challenge in your community. The challenge in this community is crime and poverty. The most affected people are youths and women and so I decided to start something to help them get out of poverty and crime,” says Ms Onyango.

To empower the groups, she partnered with other organisations and trained them on how to start small businesses within the community.

After joining Team Revolution, the members, who are currently 27, are taken through a one-week training.

They are trained in different small businesses ranging from cookery, banking and business skills.

After the training, each member presents a business idea of something they would want to start. Members are also given small loans from their table banking project to start their business.

“Members save Sh100 weekly and are entitled to a loan two times their savings. They are also required to pay the loan in a month,” said Judy Lumumba, the project coordinator.

According to Amira, the loans from the group gave her a reason to join the team.

Motivated

“I decided to join the training and see what business I can learn from them and start a small business. The other thing that motivated me was the loan they were giving members to start their business. We have business ideas, but getting the capital to start is hard,” Amira says.

“I have learnt to make chapatis and mandazi and sell them to make a few shillings to cater for my family,” said Mako Ali, a member of Team Revolution.

Margaret Wairimu also owns a small shop in the heart of Korogocho that she started from the loan she got from the organisation.

The mother of one said she joined the group when she heard how women in the area were benefiting from the training and the loan.

“I was already running a small shop here but, after undergoing the training, I learnt how to save and also balance my books. I now know how to separate my sales and the profit,” she said.

Were it not for Team Revolution, most of the 27 members of the group would be part of the 38.9 per cent jobless Kenya youths.

Census data released in November 2019 shows that 5.3 million -- or 38.9 per cent -- of the 14 million young Kenyans are jobless.

The number is now higher after 1.7 million more Kenyan lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report released by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics on September 1, 2020.