Category: economic empowerment and livelihoods
Grantee Highlight: Vegetable Farming Gives New Hope to Women Living with HIV in Sironko
Grantee Highlight: Vegetable Farming Gives New Hope to Women Living with HIV in Sironko
In Uganda, HIV and AIDS infection rates continue to increase in both rural and urban areas despite aggressive public awareness campaigns by both public and private institutions. This development has had a unique effect on the lives of women. With married women, for instance, the loss of a spouse often leaves them to fend for themselves and their children who are sometimes also infected with the virus. The Community Holistic Development Organization, (CHODO) a local community-based organization that focuses mainly on economic empowerment for women living with HIV and AIDS, has been working to address this issue.
Equipped with a grant from the African Women’s Development Fund, CHODO set out to train 308 selected HIV infected women in the Sironko district of Uganda in vegetable farming. Through vegetable farming the women inherit a sustainable source of income and provide life-long skills that would be useful in other areas of economic activity.
To start with, the women identified pieces of suitable farmland before being trained in fertilizer spraying, seed selection and other farming methods. Soon, cabbage gardens sprung up in various areas of the Sironko district of Uganda.
To create a ‘sustainability’ cycle, the vegetables grown were then sold to generate income that was invested as start up capital for their own businesses. Some of the capital was invested into livestock rearing. The women were given technical assistance and training on how to manage their livestock rearing projects. This gave them a sense of ownership and self-confidence in their abilities and creative capacities.
CHODO has been successful in improving the livelihoods of the women living with HIV, who do not earn an income . In most cases such women experience discrimination and are likely to die faster due to lack of financial support and marginalisation from their communities. Through the project, the women have been able to develop a consistent source of income allowing them to become economically cally independent.
‘As an HIV positive person, I feel proud that I am doing something that will enable me live a better life. ‘Harriet Namono, one of the beneficiaries of the vegetable garden project elatedly reported.
“All I can say is I am very grateful and very happy.” Modesta Nakusi, another beneficiary shared. “Whenever I look at my cabbage, I smile to myself. I have lived with HIV for 15 years but I am still strong. Thank you CHODO for supporting me.’
The success of the project is also challenging the community’s’ negative perceptions about women living with HIV, recognising them as still significant and productive agents in the country’s economic development.
CHODO intends to undertake another project to help the rural women diversify and sustain their household incomes by engaging in both farm activity and off-farm business during different seasons.
Join us in supporting work like this by making a contribution to AWDF today!
Grantee Highlight: Wealth for Smallholder Women Peanut Farmers in Muwena
Grantee Highlight: Wealth for Smallholder Women Peanut Farmers in Muwena
Women smallholder farmers comprise an average of 43 percent of the agricultural labour force of developing countries. In Africa in particular, many communities depend on women to grow most of the food they eat, yet they continue struggle with lack of access to capital, land, agricultural inputs, tools and technology needed to move up to large scale farming.
In Muwena, a town of Livingstone Province in the South of Zambia, Women smallholder farmers have been cultivating peanut on a small scale using traditional outmoded means for consumption and sale. However these methods prevent the women from earning any meaningful income to meet their social needs and ensure household food security.
In 2014 Children with Future in Zambia (CWFiZ) a local NGO working to promote the economic and social welfare of vulnerable groups, particularly women and orphans, received a grant from the African Women’s Development (AWDF) for a capacity building project for women farmers in Muwena.
CWFiZ, worked with 225 women smallholder peanut farmers, training them in improved farming methods and the processing and marketing of peanut to increase the efficiency of their farm business.The project aimed to facilitate a transformation of peanut farming in the Muwena community to achieve a greater degree of food security among selected women smallholder farmers while increasing competitiveness in the domestic markets.
The program sought to build the skills of smallholder women farmers, training them in improved production and post-harvest handling practices that include improved plant seed varieties and access to quality agricultural inputs, tools and support services.
The project also provided women smallholder farmers with a peanut butter processing plant and a housing facility. The women have come out with test peanut butter products which were exhibited at fair in Lusaka in June 2015. The product has attracted a lot of attention from consumers, a positive sign for the women cultivators and processors.
The label of the peanut butter has the inscription ‘Nsabo Yetu’, meaning ‘our wealth,’ reflective of the benefit derived from the women’s hard work. The product has been certified awaiting large scale production and marketing.
Join us in supporting work like this by making a contribution to AWDF today!
Grantee Highlight: Post-Ebola Women’s Groups Need Funding
Grantee Highlight: Post-Ebola Women’s Groups Need Funding
By Amba Mpoke-Bigg, Communications and Fundraising Specialist at the African Women’s Development Fund
MONROVIA, Liberia – I was woken from deep sleep by my middle child one night a few months ago. She was burning hot to the touch, whispered that she wasn’t well, then she threw up – as did her younger sister who developed identical symptoms the next day. For the next 48 hours as the viral flu ran its course, I nursed them and held them close. That’s normal, I’m their mother.
But for millions of mothers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three countries worst affected by last year’s outbreak of Ebola disease, it was different. Children with Ebola can’t be touched or nursed at home and as the virus raged, so did superstition, fear and a sense of helplessness, in the wake of limited healthcare infrastructure and poor understanding of the disease’s action.
Women suffered disproportionately in combating Ebola, mainly because of their traditional roles as nurses and healthcare workers, yet the part they played as agents of change and frontline partners in curbing the epidemic has been largely overlooked by international media.
In each of the three countries, women were among the first responders, leading the vital on-the-ground education campaigns which led to changes in harmful burial practices, traditions of touching the dead and to better hygiene and sanitation. Women were there as counselors educators, distributing food and sanitation products, or contact tracers who monitored Ebola cases in the communities.
As governments of the three nations begin the first cautious steps to recovery, for thousands of women survivors of Ebola this means taking on new roles as primary breadwinners and family heads after losing husbands, fathers and their livelihoods.
Some women’s organisations have started micro-credit loans to help survivors. Others have initiated seed capital schemes to enable women farmers to purchase seeds and tools to pick up their farming activities once more. Many survivors will also need long term pyscho-social support as well as immediate help with children’s school, feeding and tuition needs.
‘It is imperative that women’s organisations be supported with funds and other forms of aid to enable women survivors and their families, make the transition,’ says Theo Sowa of the African Women’s Development Fund, which mobilised over half a million dollars to women’s organisations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to help the countries combat the disease.
Returning from a week-long visit to Liberia and Sierra Leone last month, I find myself immensely grateful for the fact that I live in Ghana, a country only a few hundred miles away, but which more by luck than its state of readiness, was spared the epidemic which has led to the loss of over 12,000 lives.
The survivor accounts I have listened to from Paynesville, Monrovia, Freetown or Port Loko, have left an indelible imprint. I salute the fortitude of women whose vivid stories paint the real picture of what it was like to live in quarantine, see loved ones ill and suffering and their own rejection when they returned from stays in Ebola Treatment Units.
“Women died because you can’t see your baby dying (of Ebola) and not pick him up,” said Miata Sirleaf who heads the New Liberian Women Skills Training Programme, an NGO which provided crucial support and training to marginalised and low-income women in Liberia’s Montserrado County during and after the epidemic.
And even as Liberia was declared Ebola free and Sierra Leone hit 25 days without a case, two new cases in Guinea just after it had begun its own countdown underscores the fragility of the efforts required to end this current outbreak.
The readmission of Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey to hospital due to complications from Ebola has only deepened the sense of unknowns around the disease and its long term impact on survivors.
For now, women’s civil society organizations like Sirleaf’s whose presence in rural communities helped to save countless lives are the best positioned to drive the post-Ebola recovery effort.
Let’s make sure to support them.
This story was crossposted to The Journalist
Photos in story by Francis Kokoroko
Join us in supporting work like this by making a contribution to AWDF today!
Network of Women in Growth (NEWIG)
Network of Women in Growth (NEWIG)
[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]$20,000 to enable the Network of Progressive Young Entrepreneurs, NPYE (which is NEWIG’s initiative) benefit from regular trainings and business information and business opportunities and also to access sustainable markets for their products.[/tp]
[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]20.000 dollars pour permettre au Réseau des jeunes entrepreneurs progressistes, NPYE (une initiative de NEWIG) de bénéficier de formations régulières, d’informations commerciales, des occasions d’affaires mais aussi d’accéder à des marchés durables pour leurs produits.[/tp]
Uluntu Community Foundation
Uluntu Community Foundation
[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]$20,000 to scale up the farms of 22 selected women farmers in Njabulo and Qedudulo through the provision of improved seeds, pesticides and goats.[/tp]
[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]20 000 dollars pour développer les fermes de 22 fermières à Njabulo et Qedudulo en fournissant des semances améliorées, des pesticides et des chèvres.[/tp]
Women for Change
Women for Change
$10,000 to train selected women in seed multiplication and para-vet (to identify and manage simple animal diseases); purchase, link and register seed growers with the Seed Control and Certification Institute (SCCI). Part of the grant was earmarked to for a goat rearing project.
Children with Future in Zambia (CwFiZ)
Children with Future in Zambia (CwFiZ)
$25,000 to purchase and install a peanut butter processing machine. Part of the grant was used to train a selected number of women farmers in modern techniques of groundnut cultivation, processing and packaging.
Families in Development Organization (FIDO)
Families in Development Organization (FIDO)
$10,000 to support 6 market-oriented small holder farmer groups, most of the group members living with HIV, to produce and sell cassava to the established government cassava mill. Part of the grant was used for training beneficiaries in business management and the management of Village Savings and credit groups (SACCOSs).
The Association of Uganda Professional Women in Agriculture and Environment (AUPWAE)
The Association of Uganda Professional Women in Agriculture and Environment (AUPWAE)
$16,700 to improve farming activities as well as increase household incomes for women maize farmers in Iganga, Luuka and Mayuge districts and train the target group in agronomy, farming as a business, post-harvest handling as well as value addition and marketing of maize products.
Maganjo Farmers Association (MAFA)
Maganjo Farmers Association (MAFA)
$12,500 to train rural women organized into 10 small farmers’ groups in agribusiness enterprise skills.