Peter Hetz of Charlotte, Vermont has joined the board of The BOMA Project, a micro-finance nonprofit with offices in Northern Kenya and Manchester, Vermont. Hetz is vice president of Tetra Tech – ARD and has 35 years of experience in international development, including two decades working in Africa as a project technician and team leader.
“In one of the toughest and most marginal environments in Kenya, challenged by increasingly unpredictable climate disruptions, civil strife and conflicts over pasture, water and livestock, BOMA represents a ray of hope for women and communities,” says Hetz. “I firmly believe that inclusion of women in community governance, enterprise and family welfare is the future of Africa. BOMA is on track to help this transformation.”
Peter’s career started in Northern Kenya in 1977 under a Watson Fellowship. He stayed in East Africa and played leadership roles for the African Wildlife Foundation, CARE, and the European Union in Tanzania National Parks, and also taught at the University of Nairobi and Makerere University in Uganda. He was deputy director and then director of the St. Lawrence University Kenya Semester Program in 1981 and 1982. In 1996, he returned from Africa to Vermont, where he has been working with ARD (Associates in Rural Development), a global consulting company that undertakes major international development contracting for the U.S. federal government, primarily USAID. Serving as vice president for ARD (now Tetra Tech) for the last five years, Peter supervises the company’s new technical directions and initiatives.
The BOMA Project, founded in 2005 by Dorset, Vermont resident Kathleen Colson, helps women in Northern Kenya to start small, sustainable businesses in their communities. BOMA’s cornerstone program, the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP), targets women living in extreme poverty and enrolls them in a two-year poverty graduation program that offers a cash grant (start-up seed capital), sustained training business skills and savings, and hands-on mentoring by a trained, local BOMA Village Mentor. To date, BOMA has launched 1,145 businesses across a region the size of New England, helping more than 3,900 women to earn a diversified income and support an estimated 19,900 children.
