Year: 2015
African Women’s Development Fund Validates Research Study on Market Women in Four West African Countries
African Women’s Development Fund Validates Research Study on Market Women in Four West African Countries
PRESS RELEASE
19th November 2015
African Women’s Development Fund validates Market Women’s Research Study: Accelerating the Contributions of Market Women to National and Regional Development in West Africa
Accra, GHANA – The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) has called on West African governments to enact policies supporting market women at both national and regional levels following a new report analysing conditions of market women in four West African countries.
The report entitled “Accelerating the Contributions of Market Women to National and Regional Development in West Africa,” is based on field research of market women in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. It aims to boost support for market women and to recognize the pivotal role they play as development stakeholders on the continent.
“This study represents yet another milestone in achieving gender justice for those women who still experience marginalization despite their immense contributions to the economies of their countries,” Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said in the report’s foreword.
The study identifies three main channels through which market women can strengthen their voice and advocate for policy changes: internal market associations; mainstream labour organizations and national and regional advocacy and rights-based organizations.
The report singles out development partners as being particularly well placed to support market women by enhancing their coalitions and network-building. In this regard, the fact that market women serve as an integral part of the expanding informal economy in countries across West Africa, and in some cases trade beyond their national borders, presents opportunities for enhancing their contributions to regional development, the report said.
The report recommends the adoption of a “regional lens” relevant for policy formulation in the interests of market women. Whilst acknowledging the significance of the launch of the Ecowas Free-Trade area in 2010, the report nonetheless calls for additional policy interventions to streamline cross-border trading procedures and address specific challenges facing women who are engaged in this trade.
Other recommendations included supporting the establishment of a West African market women’s association to facilitate on-going dialogue with policymakers, expanding and adapting the SMWF model to the four countries to respond to some of the challenges identified by market women through the research study, investing in training for market women leaders, and the institution of a scholarship scheme for children of market women.
The report was conducted by a team commissioned by the African Women’s Development Fund, in cooperation with the Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund and was funded by the Ford Foundation /West Africa. In addition the team received technical and institutional support from the African Women’s Development Fund.
- ENDS –
To obtain a copy of the report and for all media enquiries please contact Amba Mpoke-Bigg: amba@africlub.net/awdf, or Hamda Zakaria: hamda@africlub.net/awdf tel: + 233 28 966 9666
The Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund (SMWF)
The Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund (SMWF) is an international, independent, charitable organization committed to restoring the livelihoods of Liberian market women and women farmers, as investing in them means investing in Liberia’s future. It was established in 2007
The Ford Foundation (West Africa) focuses on projects that promote democratic values and engage citizens in advocating for their social and economic rights. It funds scalable programs that stimulate private enterprise, with a focus on developing small- and medium-sized businesses. The foundation also funds regional projects that help strengthen regional integration across West Africa.
The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF)
The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant-making foundation that supports local, national and regional women’s organisations working towards the empowerment of African women and the promotion and realisation of their rights.
The vision of the AWDF is for women to live in a world where there is social justice, equality and respect for women’s human rights.
Grantee Spotlight: NEWIG launches capacity building project for women entrepreneurs in Ghana
Grantee Spotlight: NEWIG launches capacity building project for women entrepreneurs in Ghana
Read the original story posted to Graphic Online
The Network of Women in Growth (NEWIG) Ghana, a non-governmental organisation, has launched a project that will build the capacity of women entrepreneurs and small holder farmers in the Adansi South District in the Ashanti Region.
Known as the “Economic governance project,” the two-phased project, funded by the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), seeks to provide integrated services for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in the area and also create an enabling environment to boost the operations of small-scale farmers to help reduce poverty.
Briefing the Daily Graphic in an interview in Accra, the Executive Director, Mrs Mawusi Nudekor Awity, said the project was meant to empower women with the requisite skills to expand their businesses.
First phase
In view of that, she said, capacity building workshops had been held for three SME groups in gari processing, oil extraction and rice production.
She added that about 60 women were also trained in business management, business advocacy and lobbying skills, product development, packaging and branding, workplace environment and functional literacy and numeracy.
“With these training programmes, we believe that the women will be emboldened to take their businesses to greater heights,” she said.
Technical skills training
Additionally, Mrs Awity explained that a two-day technical and management development skills training programme had been put together for the local service providers who would in turn support the women to access big markets through the compliance of quality standards.
“We believe that with these acquired skills, the women will now be in a better position to collaborate effectively with the district assembly and banks operating in the district and the traditional council on issues including policy formulation that will enhance their businesses and forge better plans ahead,” she noted.
New Report shows how African Rural Women hold the key to cultivating Diversity, Climate Change Resilience and Nutrition
New Report shows how African Rural Women hold the key to cultivating Diversity, Climate Change Resilience and Nutrition
New Report shows how African Rural Women hold the key to cultivating Diversity, Climate Change Resilience and Nutrition but are threatened by Agri-business practices and seed monopoly laws as climate change worsens.
As delegates from around the world prepare to meet at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, a new report from the African Biodiversity Network, The Gaia Foundation, and the African Women’s Development Fund shows that a vast wealth of knowledge about crops, wild foods, nutrition, medicinal plants and biodiversity is on the verge of being lost in Africa, just when it is most needed for climate change resilience. Crop and plant diversity is critical in the face of climate change and yet rural women – those who are most knowledgeable about cultivating this diversity – are being actively undermined. This report shows how the agri-business industry is promoting seed monopoly laws which would criminalise the farmers who save, exchange and sell their seeds – a practice which has been at the heart of agriculture and enhancing seed diversity for millennia.
The report – Celebrating African Rural Women: Custodians of Seed, Food & Life – released on 25th November in central London celebrates the vital role that African rural women play in selecting, breeding and enhancing the diversity of their seeds and protecting wild biodiversity. It sets out how the complexity of this knowledge has evolved through women’s intimate relationship with land and seed, and their understanding of the nutritional and cultural needs of the family and community– all of which lie at the heart of food sovereignty and ensuring climate change resilience.
Liz Hosken, Founding Director of The Gaia Foundation and lead author on the report says “Today in Africa, it is small farmers – who are mainly women – who still produce 80% of the food on just 14.7% of the agricultural land, despite growing pressures. Since colonisation women in Africa have been disproportionately undermined by the successive waves of colonial and globalisation policies and practices. In July this year, many African governments signed onto the Agri-business-led ARIPO Protocol introducing seed laws that would criminalize farmers for saving, exchanging and selling the seeds they cultivate. Through legal avenues such as this a handful of corporations threaten to control the continent’s entire seed and food system, and in doing so, directly usurp and undermine small farmer’s capacity to deal with climate change. This goes to the core of woman’s role as custodians of seed diversity, further pushing women to the edge and directly violating their rights.”
Theo Sowa, Chief Executive of the African Women’s Development Fund, added “Agri-culture is a way of life for Africa’s 80% rural population. It has evolved over millennia, establishing the diverse cultural food systems of the continent and is central to people’s spiritual and cultural lives. However because these livelihood systems do not contribute significantly to the market economy they have been denigrated and it is men who have been the target for commercial interests promoting cash crops for foreign markets. This has further side-lined women, who have become increasingly invisible despite their critical role in meeting the diverse nutritional, medicinal and cultural needs of the family and the community. As a result women’s status and leadership has been undermined at all levels.”
Professor Patricia Howard, Ethnobotanist with the University of Kent and author of Women and Plants: Gender Relations (2003) said “Women are traditionally custodians of the whole seed cycle from selection, cleaning, storage to identifying which seeds to plant each season. They use a wide range of criteria such as drought resistance, nutrition, taste, cooking time and storability when they select their seed. Through continuous use and seed exchange they maintain the best genetic potential in their crops for dealing with environmental stresses, pests and diseases, as well as qualities such as quick growing and climate resilience. As the arrival and volume of rains in Africa becomes increasingly unpredictable, it is these locally adapted seeds that have the resilience to ensure families can eat and make a living in times of climate change.”
The report shares stories of the resistance that is building through the African women’s movement for food sovereignty and initiatives to restore and scale-up agro-ecological practices and the leadership role of women. It states that the revival of these diversity based, resilient food systems serves to cool the planet by absorbing carbon into the living soils, and to regenerate local economies.
Liz Hosken’s message to those gathering in Paris next week is that “We need to develop initiatives, programmes and policies to re-dignify the traditional knowledge held by African rural women and their leadership role in the family and the community. Reclaiming and enhancing seed diversity and women’s traditional knowledge and role underpins the regeneration of community cohesion and ecologically viable food systems which is the basis of climate change resilience, feeding the world and cooling the planet.”
– ENDS –
The report will be launched on Wednesday 25th November at an event in Central London. Speakers at the launch are Theo Sowa, Director of the African Women’s Development Fund, Liz Hosken, Director of The Gaia Foundation and Patricia Howard, Honorary Professor of Ethnobotany at Kent University. Full details:
For all media enquiries please contact Rowan Phillimore on +00 44 207 428 0051 or email rowan@gaianet.org
Endorsements:
“In the last few decades, Africa has been under tremendous pressure to open up its economies to foreign corporations, to industrialise its agriculture and to privatise its precious seed diversity. In the process, the contribution and profound knowledge of its rural women have been increasingly sidelined, marginalised and violated. Read this report to understand how this happened and why it is high time to support Africa’s women to take centre stage again in farming systems, revive their knowledge and lead Africa towards food sovereignty.” Henk Hobbelink, Coordinator of GRAIN
“Few publications address the crucial role of African women as curators of some of the richest agrobiodiversity on the planet, much less map out not only the driving forces that cause these women to lose their heritage, status, and security, but that also discuss what can be done about this from the perspective of the women themselves, as well as their allies in the scientific and development community. Three cheers for this vital contribution!!” Professor Patricia Howard, Ethnobotanist Kent University
“Right now Africa is facing a huge threat to its rich and diverse seed, food and farming systems as commercial interests see our seed as an untapped market. We cannot let this happen. This report shows us why and how it will impact on women especially.” Dr Melaku Worede, Ethiopian plant geneticist
Behind the report:
The African Biodiversity Network (ABN) was founded, in 2002, to ignite and nurture a growing African network of individuals and organisations working passionately from global to local level, with capacity to resist harmful developments, to influence and implement policies and practices that promote recognition and respect for people and nature. The vision of the ABN is for vibrant and resilient African communities rooted in their own biological, cultural and spiritual diversity, governing their own lives and livelihoods, in harmony with healthy ecosystems. Through its Secretariat in Kenya, the network of ABN members are working to strengthen: the revival of indigenous seed and associated knowledge, contributing to food sovereignty; traditional ecological governance systems, protecting areas of ecological, socio-cultural and spiritual importance; and a proactive youth movement, celebrating culture and biodiversity, across Africa.
The Gaia Foundation (Gaia) is committed to regenerating cultural and biological diversity, and restoring a respectful relationship with the Earth. Together with long-term partners in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe, Gaia work with indigenous and local communities to secure land, seed, food and water sovereignty, revive indigenous knowledge, protect sacred natural sites, and strengthen community ecological governance. Gaia’s work supports small farmers to revive and exchange locally adapted, indigenous seed varieties, free from corporate control and debt into the future and to protect ecosystems and local communities from the impact of mining and extractivism.
The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant-making foundation that supports local, national and regional women’s organisations working towards the empowerment of African women and the promotion and realisation of their rights. The vision of the AWDF is for women to live in a world where there is social justice, equality and respect for women’s human rights. The organisation believes that if women and women’s organisations are empowered with skills, information, sustainable livelihoods, opportunities to fulfill their potential, plus the capacity and space to make transformatory choices, then we will have vibrant, healthy and inclusive communities. AWDF amplifies and celebrates African women’s voices and achievements, supports efforts that combat harmful stereotypes, and promotes African women as active agents of change.
Brazil Black Women’s March: African Women’s Development Fund Says No to Racist and Sexist Violence
Brazil Black Women’s March: African Women’s Development Fund Says No to Racist and Sexist Violence
As African women we stand in solidarity with Afro-Brazilian women as you take to the streets in the Marcha das Mulheres Negras [Black Women’s March] and raise your voices to say NO to racist and sexist violence, and to affirm that you, as all women, have a right to live with full choice, dignity, well-being and respect.
We are across an ocean but our histories are connected. We are inspired by your activism and your bravery, and we will always work alongside you for equality, justice and a transformed world.
–Staff of the African Women’s Development Fund
Musings on Solidarity: Brazil Black Women’s March takes place today
Musings on Solidarity: Brazil Black Women’s March takes place today
Read the original piece posted on AWID here
Marching in Solidarity: Marcha Das Mulheres Negras
Musings on Solidarity
By Amina Doherty
November 16th, 2015
As an activist I often think about what it means to ‘be in solidarity with’ and what it means to use my body, heart, and voice to amplify the stories and struggles of my brothers and sisters whom society has for various reasons “deliberately silenced” or “preferably unheard.”
As a Black, African, Woman, and Feminist – ‘solidarity’ has meant different things to me in different moments. It has meant using my voice in different ways to speak out against injustice and oppression, expressing my unwavering support to other feminist sisters, and being willing to do the real work of showing up, being present, and being able to navigate the very real complexities of the diverse social movements that I am part of. Solidarity, as I understand it, is more than just a passive concept that people refer to when for whatever reason they want to say they support you, rather, it is a verb, and it is something that as feminists we must actively ‘do.’ It involves the deep and intentional practice of listening to each other and hearing what it is that each of us needs and wants, as much as it is about mutual trust and respect. Solidarity is about building strong relationships that hold every one of us accountable, and forces us to unpack the privilege that we hold, and simultaneously to embrace the beauty that exists in our diversities and multiple ways of being in the world.
Marching in Solidarity
In this present moment, as I prepare to journey to Brazil with a group of Black sisters with roots, families, and homes in Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Haiti, Kenya, South Africa and the US, to be on the streets as part of the historic March of Black women against racism and violence (March das Mulheres Negras), I have many things on my mind including thinking about my understanding of solidarity – and ultimately what it is that connects us in our struggles, in our organising, and in our collective (Our)stories.
As I plan to be part of this historic moment, I think about what it is that we (as a group) hope to ‘do’, and how we intend to ‘be’ together in solidarity with our sisters and Black family in Brasilia. Together, and with support from the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), we join this march against racism and violence, in order to share our voices, the similarities of our stories and struggles, and the immense love that we have for each other as global Black family.
In a preparatory conversation among the group traveling to Brazil, one of the sisters noted that for her, one of the ways of offering solidarity is to be more deliberate in the kind connections and understanding being built.
She said “for me, really making time to truly listen and understand how Black women in Brazil are organising around racialised violence and police brutality is hugely important.”
In our discussions, our group agreed that part of the work we must do while together in Brazil must centre around making global/local connections and thinking creatively about how we can visibilise and amplify the stories and struggles of our sisters in Brazil in all of the spaces we engage in and in our own communities.
One of the sisters that is part of the group traveling to Brazil – Thenjiwe McHarris once wrote:
“For me, there is nothing that gets built unless people learn to love each other. That takes time but, we need to love and appreciate one another. There is only so much we can accomplish with our generation but we need to figure out what to leave for the next generation and help them reach a better position than what we walked into. On the one hand we must establish an understanding of our shared struggles but also have the kind of bond that is necessary to fight together because all our people deserve to live.”
It is in these words, these discussions, and in these moments, that I gain energy and insight and prepare to be with and among, and to be present with my sisters in Brazil as we March in Solidarity.
About the Marcha Das Mulheres Negras
On November 18th 2015, thousands of Black women from all states and regions of Brazil (and globally!) are expected to descend on the capital of Brasilia.The Marcha das Mulheres Negras, will bring together thousands of Black women to march for rights, justice, freedom and democracy. The March, which represents the culmination of years of mobilizing, and collective organising is an initiative of various organizations, and groups that are part of Black Women’s Movements and the Black Movement in Brazil. The March has received support from a diverse range of Black intellectuals, artists, and activists from across Brazil, Latin America, the United States, and Africa.
The March of Black Women is particularly meaningful given that it takes place during the UN International Decade of African Descent 2015-2024, and the month of Black Consciousness in Brazil.
Connecting the Local to the Global
Recognizing the incredible privilege that we as a group have to be able to be part of this historic event, and in our efforts to amplify this experience we call on all of you – who are not able to be physically present with us at the March in Brazil, to share with us your words, art, videos, photos, and poetry in support for all of the Black women that will march on the streets of Brasilia next week.
Here are some of the ways you can join us…
- Make a hand written sign stating, “YOUR NAME/ORGANIZATION supports the Marcha Das Mulheres Negras”
- Hold the sign while recording a short video (30 sec – 3 min), stating your name/organization, where you are from and why you support the Marcha Das Mulheres Negras.
*If possible, please state why the struggle in Brazil matters to you and your local struggles. The goal is to emphasize that our collective struggle as Black people is global.- Post the video to your organization’s Facebook page and/or your individual Facebook Page and tag the #MarchaDasMulheresNegras and put a twibbon on your Facebook or Twitter Profile.
- Participate in the November 18th live tweet-a-thon. Tweet your video with the hashtags #MarchaDasMulheresNegras #BlackFeminisms #AfriFem
- Spread the word! Tell people about the March, invite people to join this solidarity effort, visit AWID website to read solidarity messages from global women’s rights organisations.
Find more information about this event via the Facebook page and on Twitter (@marcha_negras) and Instagram (@marchanegras2015).
‘Monrovia Mayor led life and death battle against Ebola’ by Billie Adwoa McTernan
‘Monrovia Mayor led life and death battle against Ebola’ by Billie Adwoa McTernan
This article was originally published on The Journalist
MONROVIA – When Paynesville Mayor Cyvette Gibson wanted to get the streets cleaned in the part of the Liberian capital that she runs, she enlisted the help of everybody she could find. Even the homeless and drug addicts helped to pick up litter. And when Ebola struck Liberia in 2014 Gibson was well placed to wield those same skills in community building to fight back against the disease.
At the height of the epidemic, she deployed more than 300 block leaders around 30 community builders in the Redlight district of Paynseville, a commercial district, to educate the population of 400,000, police their behaviour and trace potential Ebola victims before they could spread the disease.
Street cleaning was important to Paynesville, but fighting Ebola was a matter of life and death and Gibson won. Her efforts backed by the U.N. Children’s Fund (Unicef) succeeded in reducing the number of Ebola cases in the neighbourhood to zero.
International health charities such as Medicins Sans Frontieres have taken deserved credit for the role they played in the fight against the worst outbreak of Ebola in human history.
But the role played by women and women’s groups has been undervalued. That matters because few actors in society can mobilize communities as effectively as women — as the example of Gibson shows.
In future health emergencies, women will and must again play a leading role, armed by their deep community ties and their ethic of team building.
In the short term, that effectiveness will be on display as Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia recover from an epidemic that killed more than 12 300 people but has dwindled almost to zero.
For example, Gibson and friends have lobbied companies in the United Kingdom and United States to provide health clinics with medical supplies for purposes other than treating Ebola.
“All of our survivors have been able to go back to their homes and have been received by the community and residents because of the awareness that was done in the community,” said Gibson, who runs the group Liberians Against Ebola. “Information is power.”
Bloated Civil Service
At the height of the Ebola crisis, African governments were able to mobilize their entire societies towards the single goal of defeating the epidemic: churches and mosques, businesses, schools and community groups all played their part.
Normally, however, things are much harder. That will make recovery from Ebola more difficult in Liberia where many families have lost breadwinners to the disease and up to 60 percent of people employed before the virus struck are now out of work.
Gabriel Fernandez, national social protection coordinator at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social protection, said that a bloated civil service and the hiring of non-essential workers, has worsened the problem.
Rather than institute systems to help Liberians support their families the public service is being used as poverty alleviation, he said.
“This (Ebola) is an opportunity to re-evaluate our social contracts and implement them. It’s a wake-up call to address issues that have been neglected,” Fernandez said.
Liberia’s budget should include provision for pensioners, school feeding and health care for those in the informal sector such as coconut sellers, motorbike taxi drivers and women traders, he said.
Some 4000 children were orphaned in Liberia by Ebola. The government, Unicef and the World Bank will provide foster grants for the children. The new focus should be on municipal development, urban planning and better services in communities, sanitation, water systems and education, he said.
Ebola Clinic to Health Centre
Nowhere is the impact of women’s intervention felt more than in rural areas.
A two-hour drive from Monrovia, past the rubber rich forest in Harbel, is Buchanan, the capital of Liberia’s Grand Bassa county.
In the thick of the crisis Martha Karnga, head of the Bassa Women Development Association, went from district to district disseminating information.
“People were not working, food was scarce, mistrust was high,” Karnga said, sitting on her front porch across from a hand-washing station for people to use before they enter her house.
“I didn’t [realise] we had a culture of shaking hands, it’s so much part of us. It left an emptiness in us, that bond that was there is gone, but we’re trying to bring it back,” she said.
They won the battle, but for Karnga and her colleagues the skills they acquired could serve in the wider task of helping the community long term.
During Ebola, she led workshops, spoke to pastors and imams and crafted messages with the most impact. She also brought in other women’s groups to spread the message of public health.
As the virus spread and people retreated to their homes afraid and wary, the Bassa Women even created a radio programme for Ebola survivors, friends and family to share their experiences, educate and reduce the stigma.
“People did not believe. People felt that they had not seen Ebola so they had doubts, and so carelessly people were still burying their dead. Even people who treated sick people were denying that the people they treated were sick.”
Buchanan has just one government hospital that is under-resourced and understaffed. Now Karnga wants its Ebola Treatment Unit to become a permanent part of the hospital for future emergencies or for primary health care.
Such a move would cement gains made through Ebola, a virus that took so much, but has left Liberian women as indefatigable a force as ever.
Billie Adwoa McTernan is an Accra-based freelance writer and editor with interests in arts, politics, development and current affairs. She began her career as a journalist, writing for a number of Africa-focused publications over the last six years. She is currently the West Africa correspondent and Art & Life editor for The Africa Report magazine, and writes for the Guardian UK and Associated Press. She has written and commissioned a wide range of stories on the difficulties women face in Ghana and in other parts of the continent. Billie was a participant in AWDF’s 2015 Writing for Social Change Workshop in Kampala, Uganda
Grantee Highlight: “Ghana, Walk for the Cure, 2015” – Breast Care International organise walk for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Grantee Highlight: “Ghana, Walk for the Cure, 2015” – Breast Care International organise walk for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
This article was originally posted on Citi FM online (Ghana)
Sunday 1st November,
More than 500 residents of Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis at the weekend participated in a breast cancer awareness health walk to sensitise Ghanaians on the dangers of the disease. The event which was organised by Breast Care International, a non-governmental organisation, brought together hundreds of people from all walks of life. The participants took part in a 17-kilometre walk from the Takoradi Jubilee Park through the principal streets of Sekondi-Takoradi and ended up at the Essipon Sports Stadium.
The campaign christened: “Ghana, Walk for the Cure, 2015,” targeted the youth to undertake regular breast cancer screening and diagnostic test for early treatment. Dr. Mrs Beatrice Wiafe Addai, the Founder and President of Breast Care International (BCI), speaking on the topic: “Fighting for a breast cancer free future for our children,” said breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of deaths among women globally. She, therefore, called for concerted efforts by stakeholders including, chiefs, teachers, the media, health workers, members of parliament, opinion leaders, the clergy and all well-meaning Ghanaians, to join forces to campaign against the disease in order to save precious lives. Dr. Wiafe Addai noted that the cause of the disease is unknown, but people who consume excessive alcohol, fatty food, smoking cigarette and sedentary lifestyle and family history of the disease are more likely to be infected. She therefore charged Ghanaians to undertake regular check-ups, exercise frequently and reduce alcohol and fat intake.
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
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Grantee Highlight: Sixty-Nine Women Graduate from NEWIG’s Youth-in-Entrepreneurship Initiative
Grantee Highlight: Sixty-Nine Women Graduate from NEWIG’s Youth-in-Entrepreneurship Initiative
This story was originally posted on Graphic Online (Ghana)
Sixty-nine young women have graduated from a three-month intensive training in vocational skills under the Youth-in-Entrepreneurship initiative.
The initiative, which forms part of the Network of Women in Growth-Ghana’s (NEWIG) project, seeks to empower young women to be gainfully employed to make them self-reliant.
They were trained in bead making, basic catering, soap making, batik, tie-dye, floral arrangement, textile designing and basic financial management.
At an event held at Tefle in the Volta Region on October 2, 2015 on the theme, “Promoting sustainable economic development through skills training for women”, the young ladies were presented with tools that would help them set up their own businesses.
The Executive Director of NEWIG, Mrs Mawusi Nudekor Awity, announced that approximately $21,000 was used in the training programme.
“Things haven’t been easy. But we believe in squeezing water out of stones to empower these young ladies. Of course, we received support from Empower, British High Commission, Crossroads International, and African Women’s Development Fund,” she said.
Mrs Awity said the NEWIG initiative used local raw materials such as coconut, cocoa pods, shea butter, paper, empty sachet water packets to create products.
According to her, there is the need to encourage the setting up of cottage industries in parts of the country, to propagate the idea of domestication through patronage of local produce.
A Senior Field Officer of NEWIG, Ms Naomi Biney, said NEWIG had a monitoring mechanism to help the graduates grow their businesses.
For his part, the Head of Rural Enterprise Programmes at Sogakope, Mr Eric Batse, said: “Small Scale Enterprises (SMEs) account for 90 per cent of the total operations in the industrial sector and offer 58 per cent of employment in the country.”
He said encouraging the growth of SMEs was a viable means of tackling the growing unemployment problem in the country.
Meanwhile, the District Coordinating Director for South Tongu, Mrs Jemima Apedo, has underscored the need for attitudinal change on the part of some Ghanaians who have insatiable taste for foreign produce, which she described as a bane of local economic growth.
The Last Days of This Ebola Outbreak are As Much about Access to Information as Access to Healthcare
The Last Days of This Ebola Outbreak are As Much about Access to Information as Access to Healthcare
Read published article here: on Qz.com
BY Amba Mpoke-Bigg
Nurse Mariatu Fofana says she should have known better than to touch and hug her father as he lay dying at his home near the capital of Sierra Leone, but she has paid an unbearable price for her error.
It also means that information campaigns to educate the public in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are far from over.
At the height of the epidemic in Sierra Leone, Media Matters for Women, a journalist-led non-profit organization deployed Bluetooth technology to provide critical information to women and girls.
Even though new cases of Ebola have dwindled almost to zero many women say they are still fighting an uphill battle against the basic social deficiencies that allowed the virus to spread with ease.
These include ignorance and traditional practices but inadequate access to basic health care also played a huge part.
For a cash-strapped country like Sierra Leone, the long term answer could lie in community ownership of health care through organizations such as German Kooperation Sierra Leone (GECKO), said Baba Car Conteh, a psycho-social worker who works with Ebola survivors in the southwestern Sierra Leone town of Port Loko.