For many women in Kenya, entrepreneurship is a pathway toward greater stability for themselves and their families. Yet building a sustainable business can mean navigating cultural and financial barriers with limited capital and support. What is often missing is not determination, but access to practical skills, appropriate financing, stronger markets, and a community that believes in what they can build.
ROSE Women’s Foundation exists to help close those gaps. Based in Kenya, the foundation empowers underserved women to build sustainable livelihoods with dignity. Its programs bring together business and financial training, access to capital, coaching, mentorship, spiritual formation, and support for emotional well-being.
“They are entrepreneurs who need access to appropriate finance, appropriate markets, and skills,” says Patricia Mghendi, Executive Director of ROSE Women’s Foundation.
For ROSE, empowerment is not only about increasing income. It is about helping women grow as business owners, providers, and leaders whose progress can strengthen families and communities.
Building Strength from the Inside Out
ROSE’s model is grounded in the belief that lasting change must address the whole person. The foundation combines practical business and financial training with coaching, mentorship, spiritual formation, and attention to emotional well-being.
“Economic progress without emotional and spiritual well-being can be fragile,” explains Mghendi. When women gain business skills but continue to carry unaddressed stress, family pressure, or trauma, their progress can be difficult to sustain. By integrating these areas, ROSE helps women become more resilient entrepreneurs, better equipped to manage risk, sustain relationships, and make decisions aligned with their values.
Mghendi understands the importance of this work personally. Raised by a widowed mother of seven, she remembers the strain poverty placed on her own family.
“If my mother was raising us during a time when ROSE existed, she probably would have been a ROSE beneficiary,” Mghendi says. She has seen how stable income, practical skills, and community support can transform not only an individual woman, but an entire family.
These women are not passive beneficiaries, she emphasizes. They are courageous, resourceful entrepreneurs who are ready for change but often lack access to appropriate financing, markets, skills, and support. With modest resources and the right guidance, their progress can reach far beyond an individual business, strengthening families and communities for generations.
One Woman’s Journey from Vision to Growth
Patricia Mutei’s journey shows what this model can look like in practice. A married mother of five from Nairobi, Mutei grew up in a family affected by alcohol abuse and began working by Grade Five to help pay for her education. Hairdressing eventually showed her how practical skills could open new possibilities for young women in her community.
In 2023, Mutei founded Danpat Hair and Beauty Academy, where students learn hairdressing and beauty skills. She had a clear vision, but needed stronger systems to manage and grow the business.
Mutei joined a ROSE program in July 2025. Through ROSE, Mutei strengthened her knowledge of bookkeeping, saving, financial planning, and goal setting. She learned to set SMART goals and approach the future of her academy with a clearer plan. One lesson in particular changed how she handled the money she earned.
“My biggest takeaway from ROSE was learning how to save and how to separate my income,” Mutei says.
Those habits brought greater stability at home and new momentum to her academy. Mutei can contribute more confidently to household expenses and her children’s school fees. After a client referred her to train young people through a community organization, her monthly income doubled during September.
Today, the academy generates approximately US$347 in monthly income and has created two jobs. Mutei has also introduced morning devotions, shared lessons on trauma healing, and sponsored three students who could not afford training.
She hopes to open more academy branches and salons where graduates can find employment, creating opportunities for others to gain skills, earn an income, and become independent.
A Trusted Partnership for a Locally Led Future
As women across its programs were building stronger futures, ROSE was navigating a pivotal transition of its own.
In 2025, ROSE reached an important turning point. The organization’s founder, its first Executive Director, and its board determined that it was time to move leadership to Kenya, closer to the women, communities, and programs at the heart of its mission. The shift was an important step toward greater local ownership. But it also created a strategic challenge: ROSE wanted to localize its leadership without losing its ability to engage donors and receive charitable support internationally.
ROSE also maintains a U.S. entity that supports its international fundraising. Its American founder and former Executive Director had also served as a familiar face and voice for an organization whose donor base was largely in the United States. As leadership moved to Kenya, ROSE needed to preserve donor confidence and visibility while managing a growing burden of cross-border administration and compliance.
The foundation needed a trusted pathway for tax-deductible giving from the United States, reliable fiduciary and financial infrastructure, better grant and donor management, and the capacity to pursue larger and more complex funding opportunities. It also needed a credible platform through which new donors and partners could discover its work.
That is where TrustBridge Global Foundation became an important partner.
Through fiscal sponsorship, TrustBridge provides the infrastructure ROSE needs to receive and track grants, manage donor correspondence, and pursue larger and more complex funding opportunities while strengthening its own internal capacity. TrustBridge’s systems made it easier for the team to receive and track grants and manage donor correspondence in a more organized and timely way. ROSE’s Giving Page on GivingSpace, TrustBridge’s giving platform where donors can discover and support charities around the world, also helps the foundation share its mission and impact with a wider audience.
“Because TrustBridge is trusted, we have, by extension, benefited from the trust donors have in TrustBridge,” Mghendi says. “TrustBridge has provided that trusted fiscal partner, a fiscal sponsorship pathway that has allowed us to accept larger and more complex grants, unlike before.”
The result is more than administrative efficiency. By reducing the time spent manually maintaining donor records and navigating cross-border requirements, the partnership allows ROSE’s local team to devote more energy to donor engagement and programs serving women. It helps connect local ownership with continued global access, supporting ROSE’s Kenyan leadership without isolating the organization from its international community of supporters.
Creating More Lasting Opportunities
With trusted support behind its locally led work, ROSE is turning its attention to the next stage of growth. Its leaders hope to strengthen the foundation’s programs and systems, reach other parts of Africa, and connect with more donors, particularly those able to provide multi-year support.
Mghendi believes greater visibility and continued guidance in donor communications and digital outreach could give ROSE more stability to enter new communities and serve more women deeply.
For ROSE, growth is ultimately measured in lives: more women equipped to build sustainable businesses, support their families, create jobs, and extend opportunity to others. With local leaders guiding the mission and trusted infrastructure supporting them, the foundation can remain focused on the work it was created to do.