Field Updates

 

Field Updates:

• Miango 17 Group Update
• Men's Leadership Training
• Rice Mill in Nigeria
• Nigerian Women: Working Together to Succeed

Group Updates:

• Chiemeucheya Oruku Women Group Update
  
  

Miango 17 Group Update

The Miango 17 women's group was composed of 20 participants. They started the program in June 2009.  They joined the program in order to develop friendship, awareness, support network and to gain self reliance in order to improve their lives and the lives of their families. 

These women live in two communities (Kitago and Jebu) of Miango district. Nineteen of them are married while one is widowed. Nine of them did not go to school at all, 6 did not complete primary school, two completed primary school, and one did not complete secondary school while one completed secondary school.  Before they joined the program, so many of the women are subsistent farmers, with only few of them who do petty trading with very little capital. Some of them hawk yams from their communities to Jos town which is about a three-hour trek.  Each woman lives in a family house with extended family members. They get water from the well within their dwellings, share a common toilet and bathroom where it is available. Few of them have electric lights while so many use kerosene lamps as source of lighting. 

Most of their children attend primary school only and do not go further because their parents cannot afford their secondary school fees. Some stop their children to help them in farm work. Girls do not generally further their education because they are prepared for marriage early in life.  Out of the 20 enrolled in May 2009, only 19 women are active in the training sessions. Only 13 were present when a photo of the group was taken. So far they have covered 24 out of 28 topics of four sections in woman’s world manual.  Topics covered are:

Women in the Economy—

• Economic value of housework
• Job opportunities for women
• The businesswoman in everyone
• Basic business and marketing skills
• Role of education and literacy in gaining economic independence

Women in the Family—

• Women and family law
• Domestic violence
• Equality in raising boys and girls

Women and Health—

• Health is a human right
• Stress and stress management
• Reproductive anatomy and physiology
• Conception, pregnancy and child birth
• HIV/AIDS
• Sexually transmitted diseases: Know the facts
• Preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases
• Menopause
• Living positively with HIV/AIDS

Women and Nutrition—

• Food security
• Nutrition
• Life cycle approach to nutrition
• Ensuring nutrition security
• Growth promotion: Children’s nutrition and health
• Preventing diseases from food contamination and use of safe water
• Environmental issues relevant to nutrition and health

These women have so far received their sponsorship fund nine times in addition to learning about their rights, how to network and marketability of the house chores. They have also learned more about business skills and marketing strategies and understood more about the importance of education in self reliance. They said, “We have gained enlightenment to improve our lives and empowered to better our standard of living." Despite the hardship and crisis in their community, these women are facing in their lives, hoping that things will get better someday. With this, they are able to make some progress.  Here are what some of them have to say—

Grace Alheri Bello, 28 years old, is married. She gave birth to five children but two died, while three are alive: two boys and one girl.  Grace helps her husband on the farm. She sometimes buys and sells tomatoes in the market in a small quantity. She makes very little profit and she uses it for family needs especially feeding. She felt so bad that both her profit and her husband’s farm produce cannot sustain her family. While in the program, she learned business and marketing strategies. With this new knowledge, she had improved her business. With the sponsorship funds she received so far, she was able to increase her business capital, now she is realizing more profit. Not only had she improved feeding in her family, she was able to pay her children’s school fees. She said: “I feel so good about myself."

Talatu Gara Iliya, 43 years old, is married. She is a mother of 10 children, seven males and three females.  She makes and sells cooked rice, beans, and yams with stew to earn income. Her husband is a primary school teacher but their total income does not meet their large family needs.  She joined the program to gain awareness and to improve her source of income.  Talatu used to face a family problem of her husband opposing her decisions. Her husband also stops her male children from helping her with house chores. Her husband believes that household chores are for women and involving a boy in it will belittle him. When she joined women for women program, she always goes back home to tell her family about the sessions she attended and shares with her family what she learns and the positive changes it will bring to her family if they accept it. After the topic on equality in raising boys and girls, she is able to gain her husband’s cooperation and listening ears. Now her male children help her with house chores Her husband also seeks for her opinion in both family and personal issues.  She said: “I am very happy and grateful to this program because it has brought unity, awareness and improvement in my family.”

Jummai Zuwo Danjuma, 38 years old, is married and a mother of five: two males and three females.  She and her husband are subsistence farmers.  Before she joined the program she used to be worried on how to meet her needs and her children’s education, she was particularly worried about her children. This is because they were staying at home after completing primary school. They all attended government primary school where free education is obtainable. Because school fees are paid in secondary schools, she cannot afford them and they cannot go further.  The farming she was doing is only for consumption which is not even enough for the year.  From the program she has gained awareness, encouragement and motivation through learning about the importance of education. Receiving monthly sponsorship funds enabled her to start a business of buying and selling local chickens. She buys from a local market and resells in the town. From the profit she makes, she is able to send 3 of her children to secondary school.  She said: “This program has given me hope in my family, it is like giving eyes to a blind person."

The Miango 17 women's group started poultry skill training on the 20th of January 2010. They are planning to start a group poultry project as soon as they complete the training. They are saving part of their sponsorship funds to enable them construct a poultry farm. They are planning to start building anytime the crisis in Jos subsides. The women will graduate in May 2010.

 

Men's Leadership Training

In Nigeria, where a woman’s health and personal freedom is often threatened by traditional customs and religious law, many men are abandoning long-entrenched gender discrimination and promoting equal rights for their wives and daughters. As the women enrolled in Women for Women International’s Nigeria Sponsorship Program encouraged development in their communities, male friends and family members began approaching WfWI. The stories unfurled one after another, all recounting how Sponsorship had indirectly restored family relationships and brought communities together.

Rather than resenting the women for their increasing economic and social power, the men appreciated the new changes in their communities and wanted to participate in the process. WfWI, recognizing that men who understand the value of women often become their strongest advocates, launched the first Men’s Leadership Program (MLP) in Nigeria in 2003, in response to this demand.

The program works with men leaders to create awareness of the marginalized sectors of communities—and these sectors’ needs—and to sensitize the men to issues of gender discrimination and economic empowerment. Since the very first MLP, WfWI has graduated more than 500 men leaders in Nigeria and has brought the program to Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with great success.

The MLP recently concluded its latest training session in July in Enugu, the capital city of Nigeria, with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation. Thirty men representing 10 communities came together to study and discuss the role of women and the many ways in which promoting women’s rights can benefit communities as a whole. Selected as the most proactive and open-minded members of their communities, the men committed themselves right away to the two-day-long schedule of courses and approached the intensive planning session—where they designed projects to share the program’s results with their communities—with a serious and earnest attitude.
Amid concerns about security and the inevitable challenges they would face when they returned home with these projects, the men remained focused on the new ideas and information. The issues broached by the courses, though at times controversial, introduced new perspectives on the role of women. As participants discussed reasons to invest in daughters, they acknowledged and discredited many negative cultural beliefs that devalue women and girls. A lecture on HIV/AIDS then led to talks about discrimination against affected women and practices that could improve the health and happiness of their families, as the men began to understand that HIV/AIDS did not need to spell the destruction of relationships.

Other deeply engrained beliefs proved more difficult to overcome in such a short period of time, however. Many men continued to perceive gender equality as a threat to their identity as leaders and breadwinners and to the associated respect this role brought them. At the same time as they acknowledged the weakness of the argument for male domination, the men feared that the loss of this supposed superiority would inevitably demote them to an inherently inferior social role—an unacceptable fate.

Despite these obstacles, the participants recognized the value of women in their communities. “The men appreciated the fact that an empowered woman will lessen the burdens they face at family and community level,” said a member of the MLP committee. Pushing their personal reservations aside for the sake of their communities, the participants pledged to encourage community development by cultivating the participation of both men and women thorough communication, advocacy and lobbying.

As the two days of intensive training drew to a close, the men set about outlining projects that would share their new perspectives with their communities. While the plans varied—some focused on creating spaces for community discussions about this evolving gender-equal consciousness, while others sought to eliminate female genital mutilation and early marriage and to sensitize individuals to HIV/AIDS issues, and still others planned to create educational opportunities for girls and to include women in inheritances—all revealed a heightened awareness of the value of women. One participant even moved to establish Sponsorship funds for the women in his community, testifying to the very real change that WfWI sponsors are creating every day.

Although “too little time!” was the one regret voiced throughout the courses and planning session, the participants, instructors, and organizers all concluded the program amid a feeling of success. The goals of the MLP reached not just the 30 participants and their communities, but more than 50,000 men and women around Nigeria through coverage by local and national media.

Preparing to return to their communities, the men expressed enthusiasm for the changes the projects could bring. The new respect for women cultivated by the MLP will not flourish left to itself, however, but will require constant collaboration by both men and women in each community. As they work together to make these new projects realities, no one group will ever be able to question the power and importance of women in building and enriching communities.

 

Rice Mill in Nigeria

In 2007, WfWI-Nigeria enrolled 640 women of Enugu State, Nigeria in a rice cultivation training program to ease the pressure of rising food prices due to high levels of importation. Their collective efforts to create a sustainable income and produce locally-grown rice for their communities led to the commission and construction of a 3.5 ton modern rice mill on government-donated land to increase the production and quality of the rice they cultivated. At the December 2008 dedication of the rice mill, hundreds of men and women came to Ekoli-Okpanku to celebrate the women’s achievement and thank WfWI-Nigeria for its contribution to increased food security for the surrounding communities.

Rice is a crucial dietary staple for most Nigerians and its consumption has increased dramatically since the 1970s. Nigeria has grown to become West Africa’s largest rice producer, yet it is also Africa’s top rice importer. With the largest population in Africa, 125 million Nigerians still rely on importation for one third of their rice supply. To ease the pressure of rising food prices in the Ekoli-Okpanku community of Enugu State, Women for Women International-Nigeria (WfWI-Nigeria) enrolled 640 women in 2007 for training in rice cultivation. Learning this trade not only provided these women with a source of income and pride of purpose; their training also helped to meet a nation-wide demand for locally-produced rice. Nigerian rice imports come from neighboring states in sub-Saharan Africa or from as far away as Thailand. As energy prices rise and costs of food production increase worldwide, high levels of importation have caused the price of rice in Nigeria to more than double in recent years. Locally cultivated rice was an important first step for the women of Ekoli-Okpanku, but as the project grew they quickly saw the need to increase the production and quality of their rice to meet the large demands of their community.

The women approached WfWI-Nigeria and expressed the need for a rice mill that would process the rice and remove stones in order for them to produce larger quantities of high-quality rice and have a competitive edge at the market. Under the direction of Ngozi Eze, WfWI-Nigeria’s Country Director, WfWI-Nigeria commissioned the construction of a rice mill. The women’s collective of rice cultivators collaborated to manage all aspects of the rice mill’s construction. They worked together to convince the ruler of Ekoli-Okpanku to donate land to the women on which to house the mill – a great achievement given that women rarely own the land on which they work. They saved their own earnings and secured sponsors to fund the purchase of the mill’s parts, and then constructed the mill themselves. Start to finish, the establishement of the Ekoli-Okpanku rice mill is truly a product of the women and their efforts.

For a town with no electricity, no running water, and only one road connecting the community to the rest of Enugu State, this 3.5 ton-capacity rice mill is a grand achievement for the community and has attracted widespread attention to the women of Ekoli-Okpanku. In December of last year, the dedication ceremony of the rice mill drew attendants from seven surrounding communities. School children were excused from their classes that day to take part in the celebration. “Not even the state government has remembered us in this way; not even [the fact that] our son [is]…in the National Assembly has attracted this kind of joy for the community,” one woman remarked during the ceremony.

The dedication ceremony included much dancing and celebration for the construction of the mill and the hard work of the women who made it possible. The ceremony also drew praise from Vivian Eze, the Enugu State Commissioner for Gender Affairs and Social Development, who promised to present the story of the women and the rice mill to the state’s governor. The community’s ruler, Professor Sam Ukpabi, thanked WfWI-Nigeria for laying a solid economic foundation for the women of the community.

The benefits of the mill constructed by the women in the WfWI-Nigeria program are widespread, improving the quality and availability of affordable rice throughout the region. With no such technology available to the surrounding villages, other farmers are bringing their crops to be milled by the women of Ekoli-Okpankuand for a fee. Professor Ukpabi also sees the potential for other lasting effects of the mill that go beyond rice cultivation and de-stoning; he has appealed to the Governor of Enugu State to improve the quality of the community’s only road, in order to increase the accessibility of the women’s rice mill and further stimulate the economy in Ekoli-Okpanku.

For the women of Ekoli-Okpanku, the construction of the rice mill means they can take a direct and active role in providing affordable, high-quality food for their communities while building a sustainable future for themselves and their families. For the town of Ekoli-Okpanku, the rice mill not only provides a necessary service, but also attracts investment from surrounding communities and the Enugu State government, buoying  the city’s infrastructure. The rice mill’s construction is also a step forward in lowering food prices as it supplies demand for locally-produced, rather than imported, rice and grains. In the context of the growing global food crisis that threatens the lives of millions, the Ekoli-Okpanku mill is a practical symbol of what occurs when women – simultaneously the most active and least resourced of the agricultural community -  are given the opportunity to apply their skill and vision to the improvement of their communities.   

 

Nigerian Women: Working Together to Succeed

Halima collects the peanuts and Larai prepares the machine that will extract the oil, while Binta develops a plan for marketing the final product. These activities are a regular part of daily life for members of Godiya Women, a peanut oil cooperative formed recently by graduates of Women for Women International’s program in Nigeria. Godiya, which means “appreciation” in Hausa, one of Nigeria’s local languages, is a group of 50 women who have pooled their skills and resources to produce and market peanut oil. Nigeria is one of the world’s top producers of peanuts, known locally as groundnuts, which form an important part of the economy.

Many of the women in Women for Women International – Nigeria’s program live in isolated rural communities whose economies are based upon a limited number of agricultural products. Forming a cooperative, in this context, helps prevent too many women from starting the same type of business. It also builds a strong network of community support for cooperative members and helps them to stretch their personal resources further. Habiba Nakande, a member of Godiya Women, said: “The formation of cooperatives to us is a good long-term investment, which is going to help us.” While cooperatives are not the sole source of income for most of their members, they provide women with a practical way to supplement their income.

In the third month of the sponsorship program, Women for Women International – Nigeria, introduces program participants to the nuts and bolts of cooperatives. They help women to identify potentially profitable business areas, navigate the legal process to officially register as a cooperative business, open a bank account and locate trainers to help them develop the technical and business skills they will need. Once the cooperatives are formed, they continue to receive advice and support from the organization.

Godiya Women is working hard to create a foothold in their community. Its members have recently acquired a store and paid rent for one year. While the group initially did not have enough funds to purchase the costly processing machine to extract oil from the nuts, new members joined and their funds enabled the group to buy the machine. They have now installed electricity and started processing their first batch of peanuts. They hold weekly meetings to discuss business activities and collect a contribution from each member to cover operating expenses.

Other cooperatives are also getting off the ground in Nigeria, including a group that makes batik products, one that leases a well and sells water and another that produces soap. Women in the program are pleased with the opportunity that being in a cooperative provides them. In the words of Hauwa Aminu, another member of Godiya Women: “Being in the cooperative makes me feel very secure and successful in business and in life.”

 

CHIEMEUCHEYA ORUKU WOMEN GROUP UPDATE.

The Chiemeucheya women group is from Nkanu East local government area of Enugu state. This group is made up of low income women and was selected after community assessments, home visits and meetings with stake holders in the community. This community lacks basic amenities like water, electricity, good roads, health centers etc. The majority of the women had little or no education and were struggling to recover from the ills of former communal clashes in their community and as well deal with the economic hardships they were facing. Security issues in this community also created disruptions to education, as children had to be kept at home.
 
The original number of women enrolled was 160. Out of the 160, 156 are active.
The active participants formed and registered as a cooperative group under the name chiemeucheya; which when   translated means that God has done his wish by uniting them to work together and strengthen each other as a group.

They received all the topics scheduled by the program under the major broad headings below

• Program introduction and overview
• Women in politics
• Women in economy
• Women in the family
• Women and health
• Women and nutrition

They also received skill training on poultry and did an initial pilot test with a total of 150 birds which they sold off after they reached maturity at 10 weeks. Due to the success of their first attempt at poultry farming and still using their temporary poultry site, they ordered for a second batch of 200 birds to be reared. Through the trainings they received, they learnt about the importance of savings and thus opened an account where they lodge in their savings (money).

Their traditional ruler, stakeholders, as well as members of land committee in their community gave them a piece of land where they could erect their permanent poultry house. They have started clearing the land and would start construction once they finalize signing of an agreement with the stakeholders with the help of a lawyer.

These women declared that the formation of their co-operative is a long term investment which would help them to improve their lives emotionally, socially and economically as they have learnt to trust each other.

Some of the women had this to say about the progress they have made so far.

“My name is Theresa Ogbu. I am a single mother of three girls all below 9 years. I separated from my husband after he abandoned me for another woman because I was unable to have a surviving male child. My only son died when he was still a toddler. I used part of the funds I got from the program to start up my sewing business in my father’s house. I was sewing before I got married but my husband made me to stop it after we had married. I make between N600 – N 800 per month because not everybody makes new clothes. Part of the funds I received also helped me to cultivate more crops in my farm than I never did before. Having learnt about poultry farming during their skill training, I am now saving towards starting a poultry farm of my own.”

“My Name is Agatha Nwatu. I am mother of seven (5 boys and 2 girls). Some of my children were sent at a tender age to work as house helps for other people. Though sending them out was not my intention, I had to comply with my husband because of our financial constraints. Participating in the program and joining the cooperative group helped me to interact with other participants, with whom I share my challenges with. I am happier than before I joined the program. This is because before I joined the program, I  get foodstuffs (which I sell) on credit and pays back after selling. But because I have a target on when to pay back, I had to sell them off with little or no profit so that I will not loose the trust of the wholesaler. When I started receiving monthly sponsorship funds, I used part of it to solve my immediate family problems, saved part of it, and reduced buying on credit. Instead of buying all the food items on credit, I pay for some and take my time to sell and with this I make more profit.” 

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