Women are power
She finds it hard to keep visiting the developing world, getting anxious and unable to sleep in the run up to it, but when Lorraine Keane went to Tanzania recently to see the work that World Vision are doing out there to empower women, it was the most pos
It takes me a while to settle back in after I come home from a trip to the developing world. We have so much and the people I have spent my week with have so little. It is wrong — everything I see around me seems materialistic. I find that I’m even short-tempered with my children, which I know is unfair and just makes me feel worse. Saying things such as: “Do you know how much we have, how lucky you are?”
Of course it’s not their fault. I am being unreasonable, but it’s just hard to forget — the stories of loss, the images of poverty. It’s very difficult to put into words how poor they are.
This was my sixth trip with an Irish charity to the developing world, so you would think I would be pretty used to it, but you never get used to it. However, now, as I write this from home, tucked up safely in my cosy life, I know I have a job to do. It is my job to tell the stories of the dynamic women-led groups I met who have transformed their own lives and that of the wider community by taking advantage of economic opportunities given to them by World Vision Ireland.
As a child sponsor with World Vision Ireland for 18 years, I wanted to see for myself where money donated by supporters is spent.
Twenty hours on three flights and a nine-hour drive through the sub-Saharan desert from Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam, and we finally arrived in Sanzawa in the Chemba district of Dodoma.
It’s important to note that World Vision Ireland do not exclusively focus on women when developing the capacity of community groups. However, my focus in Tanzania is the women in the communities where World Vision works, their stories of entrepreneurship where women mean business.
The fact is that when women and girls earn money, they reinvest 90pc of it into their families. For men, the average is between 30pc and 40pc. Such is the importance of women to the rural economy and child well-being.
Giving women economic empowerment, financial independence and security not only has a positive impact on the well-being of children and households, but entire communities and beyond.
I met three womens’ groups together in Kurio Village in the Sanzawa Area Development Programme, all of whom are engaged in year-round farming. I’ll never forget the picture of suddenly arriving upon rows of lush green trees and plants, having driven a further four hours through the arid landscape, down dusty dirt tracks, past pastureless fields of burnt red clay. Here, on this out-of-place fertile patch of the Saharan desert, 20 or 30 women farmers in brightly coloured floor-length prints worked.
They are the Mapambano Group of 17 women (Mapambano means ‘struggle’ in Swahili) who have in
just two years turned their 10 acres into a profitable business. These crops of onions, tomatoes, okra, guava, sweet peppers, Chinese cabbage, chilli, mangoes, and oranges are eaten at home to improve household nutrition and are also sold to the surrounding community and at markets in the district to boost the women’s incomes.
School children are given seedlings and learn about agroforestry by tending to the trees in their practical agricultural lessons, while the vitamin-C-rich fruits boost the nutrition content of school meals.
These women farmers are no longer completely reliant on scarce and increasingly unpredictable rainfall and they are not limited to one or two growing seasons per year. With World Vision Ireland’s support, training and tools, having constructed a borehole with a solar pump, thus enabling them to irrigate their land, these farmers produce a wide range of nutritious crops all year round. The farmers and their families no longer live day to day.
Talking to these women, hearing their positive stories of hope for the future, was inspirational.
Our next visit took us to the Mundemu Area Development Programme in the Bahi District. World Vision Ireland’s CEO Helen Keogh last visited this group of women five years ago. She had obviously been monitoring their achievements, but seeing Helen’s excitement and her eyes fill up as we turned the corner was proof that the women have made a lot more progress than even she expected.
Calling themselves The Upendo Group (Upendo means ‘love’ in Swahili), their achievements are proof that money is getting to the people who need it. World Vision supported the women to establish a savings and loans group in 2012, along with training in horticulture, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
However, the real story here is the shrewd business decisions of the women themselves. World Vision was merely a catalyst, providing the access to knowledge, skills and resources to enable these women to release their inner entrepreneur. The women slowly developed their businesses to the point where they could use them as collateral to take out larger loans from banks, which allowed them to further invest and diversify.
Since 2012, they have been involved in a large range of businesses — retail, catering, hairdressing and sunflower trading, to name a few. As their agricultural work has become more and more profitable, they have decided to focus their energies on their horticulture, while also maintaining enterprises in pig-farming and beekeeping. Tanzanian honey is known as one of the best quality honeys in Africa, so beekeeping is a useful resource for consumption and sale.
Weekly meeting
These women farmers have been able to support their families through school and develop their homes while also ensuring their families have access to all the food, clothes and medical treatment they need.
It is important to note that World Vision do not give money — they provide support in both agricultural practices and entrepreneurship. Just as importantly, World Vision have trained these communities in how to manage their money by helping them to establish savings and loans groups. We were invited to attend one of these VLSA meetings (Village Loan and Savings Association) in the remote village of Babayu in the Bahi District of Dodoma.
To witness this weekly meeting, which took place under a tree in a sheltered part of the village, was a humbling experience. With such dignity and pride, each member of the group, which comprises 15 women and one man, saved between 70 cent and €2 per week, allowing them the means to borrow for events such as funerals and weddings, as well as pay in to a social fund which supports five of the most vulnerable children in the community with their basic needs.
I will never forget the shy, awkward faces of two young girls in their school uniforms, not much older than my own two children at home, who were asked to step forward and introduce themselves to us. They, along with their younger siblings — all orphans — were being supported by the community to go to school while the younger children were cared for at home.
Through hard work, dedication and commitment, these VSLAs have not only educated a community on saving, investing and expanding their businesses — they have been instrumental in bringing entire communities together to support and look after each other.
The group plans to work towards establishing an office building to run its operations from and extend its support to more child-headed families — vulnerable orphans — in the community.
I have to tell you about one such modern brick building that I came across almost by accident, which stood out like a bright new pin among the dusty brown stone dwellings of the local people. It was so new that the plastic still hadn’t been removed from the glass windows.