Category Archives: Empowering women

The Sari that protects against cholera

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This piece was posted by Communications Intern Hilde Faugli.

Woman in Varanasi, India

Woman in Varanasi, India. Photo: Peter Caton

The sari, it seems, may offer more than perhaps what we usually expect of a piece of cloth. The sari, that traditional brightly coloured garment worn predominantly in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, is currently being used by innovative women in Bangladesh to filter their daily water, thereby reducing cholera. 

A study published by the American Society for Microbiology shows the amazing results of women in Bangladesh who are using their saris to filter their daily water, in reducing cholera.  In 2003 researchers found that simply teaching Bangladeshi village women responsible for collecting water to filter the water through folded cotton sari cloth could reduce the incidence of cholera by nearly half. Five years later they found that the practice was sustained by many of the women in the village, and that it had also spread to some women that initially were not given training on how to filter water.

One of the things that particularly strikes me about this story is the simplicity of the technique.  It does not rely on costly technologies and it is socially acceptable, the filtration method did not require financial resources or extensive training on the part of the village women, and it was easily included in their daily activity.

Another thing that stands out is the fact that targeting women is a very effective way of bringing about change. Women in the developing world usually bear the brunt of the responsibility for their families’ daily needs, cooking, collecting water, collecting firewood, etc. A focus on women is therefore also often a focus on the broader household, and as, seen here, sometimes the wider community.

This resonates with Find Your Feet’s approach. Rather than bringing expensive, technologically complicated inputs into communities we support them to use locally available resources and to build on their own skills and knowledge to develop solutions to the problems they face. And, by involving women in leadership positions at every stage of our projects, the women we work with are gaining the skills and confidence to bring about changes that will benefit the whole community.

Click here to read more about Find Your Feet’s work with women.

International Women’s Day

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This piece was posted by Betty, Programmes Officer, FYF UK Office.

Yesterday I celebrated International Women’s Day in the grand setting of the House of Lords as a guest of Baroness O’Loan, DBE. I heard about the important role that women play in the fight against hunger by growing food to feed their families.

Mable Chango, Malawi

Phoebe had travelled from Tanzania to speak passionately about the 18 hour day worked by many of her fellow farmers who undertake back-breaking work in the fields as well as collecting water and fuel, cooking and cleaning and caring for their families. She considers herself lucky to have learned how to be a more productive farmer with the support of Concern Worldwide.

Baroness O’Loan spoke movingly of the harsh conditions in Africa that she had seen while living and raising a family there. Two other women gave birth on the same day as her. While Baroness O’Loan rested, one of the women tied her baby to her back and went back to work in the fields. The other tragically had to dig a grave to bury her child.

The event was organized by Concern Worldwide, Actionaid and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development. Along with most others at the event I signed in support of Concern Worldwide’s campaign “Unheard Voices: Women Can’t Wait” which is demanding that world leaders act now to support poor women in their fight against hunger.

This campaign is close to our hearts at FYF. We support poor women in India and Malawi to fight hunger for themselves and their families by training them to grow more crops using sustainable agriculture and to earn money to buy food and other essentials. Before I left work for the House of Lords I was reading about one of the farmers that we work with in Malawi. Joyce Vivuyi has a large household to feed – her husband does not have formal employment and 5 of their 7 children live at home along with two orphaned girls and two grannies. Joyce leads a group of farmers who have started an enterprise producing eggs. The eggs make a valuable contribution to her family’s diet and the group hopes to begin to make a profit soon from egg sales. Using manure from the poultry house has saved her money by reducing the amount of fertiliser that she needs to buy for her crops.

Women like Joyce need our support because of the lack of help that governments give to smallholder farmers, particularly women. This campaign will help to bring attention to their plight and provide them with agricultural and other services they need to reduce their poverty and hunger.

Voices of Rural Women on Climate Change

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“The special perspective of women is often overlooked in global discussions on climate change.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon

Today (October 15th) is Blog Action Day. This year bloggers have decided to create discussion around climate change, in the lead up to Copenhagen this December.

Today is also Rural Women’s Day. This international day was established with the aim of recognizing “the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.”

Women’s ‘critical role’ in producing and providing food for their families means that they are most adversely affected by climate change and that they are already developing innovative ways to adapt.

Why don’t you take a look at this video I made after my trip to India earlier this year. In the video women in rural India share their stories about the way climate change is affecting them. The video also shows the innovative ways these women are finding to adapt to climate change.

Help us to continue supporting women in rural areas to adapt to some of the worst effects of climate change. Donate now.

Quotas for women in Panchayats

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In 1992 the Indian parliament passed the 73rd Amendment to the constitution for rural local bodies (panchayats.) This gave 33% reservation of seats for women in all three tiers of the Panchayati Raj. Questions remain however as to whether or not this affirmative action is sufficient to ensure the participation of women in the public sphere.

Nirmila (in purple) with her Self Help Group

“In the Self-Help Group we have power and freedom, but in the Panchayat I still feel limited by the fact that I am a woman and that I am illiterate. However because, as a group, we represent 25 votes, I think that the Block Development Officer is finally going to have to listen to us.” Nirmila, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh (at the back in purple)

When I was in India I was particularly inspired to meet Ramesh Wari (featured in my post “The power of the Self-Help Group.” ) Having been a member of a Self-Help Group she had been elected to the local panchayat where she was successfully lobbying for the rights of her fellow Self-Help Group members. However, while I was there I also met Nirmila, who told me that, whilst she had been elected to the panchayat, she was really struggling to make sure that her voice was heard in meetings “because I am a woman and I am illiterate.”

Nirmila’s story is not an isolated one. Since 1992 questions have arisen as to whether or not simply reserving seats for women is sufficient to overcome the rigid social and cultural barriers that women face and which disallows their participation in the public sphere. Even after coming to positions of power, dalit women often find that they are left sitting on the floor during the course of the panchayat meetings while the male upper caste members sit on the chairs. And, as illiterate first timers, they often depend on the men folk for conducting panchayat activities. As a result they become little more than puppets in the hands of male relatives.

However I think that, as Ramesh Wari’s story shows, there is hope for women like Nirmila. Ramesh Wari has been a part of the Self-Help Group in her village for two years. Meanwhile Nirmila’s Self-Help group was only formed eight months ago. Ramesh Wari’s confidence to speak out in the panchayat, fighting for the rights of the women she represents, is the result of time spent as a Self-Help Group member, discussing issues in the group and successfully lobbying government officials to fulfil their rights.

The fact that Nirmila is part of a Self Help Group therefore stands her in good stead (indeed she might not even have stood for election had she not been a member of an SHG) And now that she is a member of the panchayat she is gaining a deeper understanding of the political system. She feeds this information back to her Self-Help Group, thereby increasing their ability to challenge the social and cultural barriers to their empowerment. This developing sense of political agency is reflected in Nirmila’s assertion that “as a group, we represent 25 votes so I think that the Block Development Officer is finally going to have to listen to us.”

This increase in political agency among women is to the benefit of all. Their focus on needs based issues, like access to clean water, education and health care, means that the whole village benefits. In Amartya Sen’s words “It is not merely that more justice must be received by women, but also that social justice can be achieved only through the active agency of women. The suppression of women from participation in social, political, and economic life hurts the people as a whole, not just women. The emancipation of women is an integral part of social progress, not just a women’s issue.”

Microcredit: The power and the pitfalls.

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Credit and debt

“I attended a training on how to run the group and how to save by making timely contributions and returning loans correctly. As a result we initiated a savings scheme and started keeping records. We have now saved 2255 Rs.” Bedi is the president of a Self Help group in Bara Kalajhore village, Jharkhand, India.

Bamari and Bedi, SHG President and Treasurer

Every couple of months a member of the Find Your Feet UK office team gives a staff seminar. These are normally based on a book that deals with an issue of relevance to our work.

Recently Betty Williams, one of the Programme Officers at Find Your Feet gave a talk about the book “What’s wrong with microfinance?” The book’s editors, Thomas Dichter and Malcolm Harper, warn against pushing credit as a right and ignoring its darker side – debt. By forging social relations based on shared debt, they argue, previous ones based on traditional reciprocity may be undermined.

Not only this but, as Blogger Tanglad writes in a powerful article A Political Economy of Shame, “given the surprising lack of entrepreneurial or job skills training in microcredit schemes, it’s not unusual for a member to default on her loan. This is when things get even uglier, as the other women in the cohort are forced to extract payment.”

On returning from India a couple of months ago I wrote a blog piece highlighting the power of the Self-Help Group. As the blog piece shows, one of the key aims of these groups is to provide women with access to affordable credit.

So are these groups prey to exactly the problems highlighted above?

In our hands

I actually think that the Self-Help Groups we support differ in their very foundation from some of the groups formed by microfinance institutions (MFIs).

Groups are popular with microfinance institutions because, as Dichter and Harper explain, they provide economies of scale. Groups appraise members’ loan proposals, guarantee loans and provide overdue loan recovery service. They also aggregate members’ savings and repayments and either disburse to new borrowers or deposit in group accounts and keep all the records – the MFI only keeps the group record.

The groups we support are, however, formed with the goal not just of increasing access to credit in an efficient way but of empowering communities to manage their own development process. This is reflected in the fact that the group itself owns the pool of money, rather than it being owned and managed by an institution outside the community. Groups therefore define their own rules, structure and responsibilities, set their own interest rates and make their own credit decisions.

Not a silver bullet but a way forward

It is also reflected in the fact that we don’t treat microcredit as a silver bullet to ending rural poverty.

Poverty elimination needs, as Dichter and Harper put it, “action on many fronts, including social safety nets, effective education, low cost health care and sound macro-economic policies.”

Our partners don’t only train Self Help Group members in financial management skills. They also provide training in vocational skills and raise awareness about the services people are entitled to. The women we work with are therefore not only developing viable small businesses, they are also helping their communities to gain access to essential services such as clean water, healthcare and education.

This has an incredibly powerful effect on the self esteem of Self Help Group members. As I wrote in the “Power of the Self Help Group,” the fact that many women are now contributing to the family income means that they have more of a say in family decisions. And, as I heard in every village I visited in India on my recent trip, the experience of working together in a group with other women for the first time is creating a new sense of trust and cohesiveness.

Sowing Autonomy: Gender and Seed Politics in semi-arid India

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“Over the last five decades, seeds have slipped out of farmers’ control by gradually becoming the prerogative of breeders, genetic engineers, commercial seed growers, registered seed dealers and bureaucrats in charge of seed market regulations. Commercial seeds are developed against a background of technological control, economic efficiency and rational management. The commercialisation and adoption of new crop varieties is undermining women’s roles in the realms of seed and crop management, and has serious implications for the maintenance of agro-biodiversity.”

Carine Pionetti, Sowing Autonomy. Published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

The power of the Self-Help Group

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Tribal dance, Jharkhand

Tribal women dancing

I recently returned from visiting our work in India for the first time. It was a truly wonderful and inspiring experience, giving me an even firmer belief in the quality of the work we do and the difference it is making to the lives of people living in rural poverty in India.

What particularly struck me on my trip was the power of the Self-Help Group (SHG) to bring about lasting change to people’s lives. SHGs, which reinforce the strong ties of kinship, neighbourliness and community, provide the building blocks for the representative federations that emerge out of FYF’s work. These federations, composed of SHG representatives, ensure the sustainability of our work long after the project has ended.

Breaking the poverty cycle

“We needed money to treat my child who fell sick so we have had to go to the money lender. When we couldn’t pay the money lender back my family lost some of our land to him. Swequani Tudo, PAHAL project, Jharkhand

Because we are not making enough money through our fields due to our land and water problems we need to get money by doing other activities. I get income from making leaf plates, from wood cutting and from working on other people’s land. I also took out a loan from our Self Help Group of 1400 Rs to buy two pigs. When these pigs are big I will be able to sell the meat for 100 Rs / Kg.

Me and the other women in the group feel much stronger now. We are making our own decisions where, in the past, we depended on male members of the family.”

Swequani Tudo

Swequani Tudo with her pigs

The first project we visited was in Jharkhand, where our five year PAHAL project working with 6,000 women began at the beginning of April. The project builds on an immensely successful two year pilot project working with 1,800 tribal women.

We were taken by each of our partner organisations (each of which are headed by tribal women) to visit four of the villages where the pilot project has been running. We were greeted in each village with flowers and dancing and then lots of excited women shared stories about all that they had already achieved through the Self Help Groups.

What really stood out for me was the difficulty of the situations these women had faced, and how, in such a short time, so much had already changed. This was especially exciting given the fact that, with the Big Lottery Fund grant, we will see even more substantial change in their lives.

Working together

Our excitement about the next five years for the women we met in Jharkhand was confirmed on visiting another two project partners, Pepus and Sabla in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states in India.

A group of women we met at the Pepus project, which is reaching the end of a five year project supported by the European Commission and the Innocent Foundation, showed all that could be achieve by working creatively together.

“We used to migrate to work in brick kilns. Even so we struggled to have enough money to eat and to clothe and educate our children. Chamela Debi, Pepus project, Uttar Pradesh

Now we grow watermelons together and we don’t have these problems. We had training on business planning and decided to use melon growing to earn an income. Together with 15 others I leased 12 acres of land to grow watermelons. Now we earn double what we put in. We use the profit to repair houses, educate children and to save in the banks”

Empowering women

Chamela Debi

Chamela Debi and her fellow watermelon growers

Chamela also told me that her relationship with her husband had greatly improved now that she was bringing in an income to the family. This shift in gender relations was most clearly reflected in what she told me about her two daughters: “My elder daughter married early but now we are more aware and have more money. Our younger daughter wants to go on to higher education and both my husband and I are happy for her to do so.”

The Sabla project, which is working with 1,500 women through Self Help Groups, is a fine example of how women are being empowered through their participation in Self-Help Groups. Meenu Tyagi, the director of Sabla, is an immensely inspiring and dedicated woman who has done so much to empower 1,500 women in Rae Bareli, one of India’s poorest districts. As a result a number of women spoke out confidently about the issues they face to Sonia Gandhi at a rally last year.

Many of these women have also been elected to the Gram Panchayat, the local level government in India. As elected members of the Gram Panchayat they are in an excellent position to ensure that the rights of women in their communities are fulfilled.

“One of our group, Rameshwri, has also been elected as a member of a Panchayat. She has already managed to achieve a lot for us. Because of her hard work a road has now been built to our village, four women have gained access to land that wasn’t being used, four women have built houses through the Indira Wass scheme and she helped a woman who was struggling due her husband’s illness to get a job cooking in the midday meal scheme.” Click here to read more about Rameshwri and all she is achieving.

Rameshwri

Rameshwri with her fellow SHG members

Long lasting change

At Pepus and Sabla we also met the members of the Federations, the representative institutions that emerge out of the SHGs. The Federation members are currently being trained to take over the running of the projects after FYF funding ends. It was great to see how strong and capable they already are of managing the revolving fund that supplements the SHG savings fund and to hear about their innovative business plans for the future.

A fortified fundraiser!

It was great to come back from my trip and go pretty much straight in to supporting our fantastic Flora London Marathon team on Sunday 26th April. I was able to inspire them with a bit about the work I had just seen in the nerve-wracking lead up to the big day and add to the elation of the post Marathon party by sharing more about how their amazing fundraising efforts really were going to help bring about long lasting change in some of the most marginalised communities in India.

Visit our Facebook page to see more photos of my trip.