Cultural Heritage Preservation Through Ushanga Initiative Cooperatives in Narok County Kenya

Abstract

Beadwork is still a potent way to preserve cultural identity while promoting and cultural heritage. Cooperatives have become essential avenues for group action and community empowerment. Ushanga cooperatives demonstrate an innate ability to recognize and capitalize on the inventive qualities of the cultural and creative industries. Despite all of this evidence, neither academics nor the cooperative movement itself have thoroughly examined the connection between CCS and cooperatives too far. Thus paper focuses on the contribution of cooperatives on cultural heritage preservation. The study adopted descriptive research design that combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The study was conducted in Narok county where Five Ushanga cooperatives operating both in Maasai Mara game reserve and Narok town with a membership of 1400 were purposively selected from the twenty (20) registered cooperatives due to their active participation and high membership. Simple random sampling procedure was used to select 300 active members from the five (5) Ushanga initiative cooperatives. Key informants were purposively selected and comprised of five leaders of Ushanga initiative cooperatives and one chief executive cooperative officer. Data was collected using structured questionnaires and key informants' interview schedules. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics for quantitative data and content analysis for qualitative data. From the study results females dominated in the Ushanga initiative cooperatives with a representation of (91.80%). This is an indication that beadwork enterprise is predominantly undertaken by females. Items such as leather bracelets (99.4%), beaded necklaces (99.2%), wristbands (99.2%), beaded rungus (98.1%) and woven garments (97.3%) were the most commonly produced items. Ushanga initiative cooperatives not only promote economic empowerment but also cultural resilience. The study comes to the conclusion that bolstering cooperative frameworks can be a successful cultural preservation tactic and suggest policy assistance to increase their influence among indigenous groups.