| dc.description.abstract | Self-help groups are informal groups of people created to share ideas and meet certain goals. One critical feature of self-help groups is the mutual support and trust among the members. Undertaking inter-ethnic integration in Kenya has been a problem owing to inter-ethnic conflicts, clan conflicts, and other human-related conflicts. In Kajiado North Sub County, common conflicts encompass; inter-ethnic land conflicts, electoral politics, resource-related conflicts, ethnic suspicions, and boundaries conflicts which threaten the integration of communities living there. The research was an empirical one and was anchored on intergroup contact theory, assimilation and dissimilation theory, and Contextual Theory of Interethnic Communication. The objectives/questions focused on: determining whether women's self-help groups bring unity, investigating how self-help groups promote peaceful coexistence among communities, and investigating the challenges experienced by women in self-help groups in raising awareness about interethnic integration in Kajiado North Sub-County. The descriptive survey design was employed as the blueprint to guide the study. The target population was 2174 self-help members from one hundred and thirty-four self-help groups. Yamane formula was used to calculate the sample size of 338 self-help group members, whereas, stratified random sampling and purposive selection of 13 county security committee members and officials from the Department of Gender and Social Services were applied. Data was gathered by the use of questionnaires and in-depth interview schedules. Qualitative data were analyzed by employing thematic content analysis, whereas quantitative data were computed by the use of excel and then analyzed by SPSS Software Version 26.0 based on the study objectives and output relayed through the use of descriptive statistics. The study indicated that women’s self-help groups had helped cultivate unity among people, supported one another in terms of socio-economic wellbeing, and acted as avenues of promoting interethnic integration in society. Raising awareness on interethnic integration was often faced by many eminent challenges such as lack of resources to hold seminars, meetings, or even to transverse from one area to other sending messages of integration. The study recommends the support of women’s self-help groups by the Kajiado County Government, non-governmental organizations, and the national government and that the support could be channeled through funding, sensitisation, registration, and recognition. In addition, there a is need to incorporate the youth and women and members of the public thus be created to build a unified, tolerant and harmonious society and on how to resolve any conflicts amicably given of the number of contributions by women’s self-help groups in the country, further research should entail investigating socioeconomic and demographic elements that hinder the growth of women's self-help groups; hence, identifying the various mechanisms that women's self-help groups employ to bring inter-ethnic integration and cohesion in Kenya. Secondly, exploring any self-help groups led by men and accessing what their core functions could involve and possibly requesting the authorities for an education program; that could provide the relevant information to the pertinent parties such as sensitizing the citizens on the law on Integration and National cohesion as by the provisions of the laws of Kenya. | en_US |
