Tag Archives: empowerment

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.

Re-evaluating tribal communities

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This piece was posted by Tahsina, FYF Trusts and Communications Intern in London:

Tribal women in Chattisgarh, India

Starting my voluntary position at Find Your Feet has been indeed inspiring. While I read about the key issues surrounding Find Your Feet’s projects, the programmes about Tribal People in India (adivasis) grabbed my attention, which is an issue very close to my heart.

I first started thinking about tribal people when I touched upon the topic in my Master’s course in Gender and International Development. Being someone who feels a strong connection and oneness with nature, I could understand their passion for their surroundings and their way of living. In a rapidly globalising world where cultures from most regions of the world are slowly coming together and meshing into one, where modernism has led to universalism, one learns to value diversity.

Besides their unique cultures and traditions, indigenous knowledge is something that is easily forgotten. The experience of the local people, along with the knowledge that has been handed down through generations can be easily overlooked by the desire to use the most technologically advanced techniques in managing natural resources. There is a clear need to open our minds to learning from tribal people and how they manage nature.

What seems to be problematic, however, is the injustice that the general disregard for the lifestyles and livelihoods of the indigenous people engenders. Indigenous people have been marginalised and their environments have been intruded upon by dominant socio-political groups in many parts of India, resulting in a lack of social, political, community and individual rights and trapping them into an inter-generational cycle of poverty. To break this cycle, it is crucial that they regain access to their rights and that they are able to reclaim their ownership.

Find Your Feet employs a bottom-up approach where individuals in tribal communities engage in making decisions that affect their lives, thereby returning power into their hands.

It is vital that the tribal communities are provided with access to safe drinking water, healthcare and education. But I have always wondered why tribal people are seen just as an ‘under privileged’ community. With the privilege of their breadth of knowledge passed on through the generations, isn’t it about time that they be supported to take matters into their own hands and get their voices heard?

On that note I wonder what the effect of global agreements like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of forests (REDD) will have on the ability of tribal communities to make sure their voices are heard. Will it have a positive or a negative effect on the poverty they face?

Pilot projects and participation

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Joba, Jharkhand, India

Originally uploaded by Find Your Feet

It’s great to be able to welcome in the New Year knowing that, over the coming five years, we will be able to support even more people in India to build a better future for themselves.

The BLF recently awarded us a grant of £467,680 of our PAHAL project in Jharkhand, India! This will enable us to work with 6,000 women in four districts of Jharkhand over the course of five years, reaching an estimated 24,690 beneficiaries. Visit our website to find out more about the PAHAL project.

What particularly stands out for me is that this five year project is built on the success of a two year pilot project funded entirely by generous trusts and supporters.

Over the Christmas holidays I read Robert Chambers’ ‘Whose reality counts?: Putting the last first.’ This book, which was first published in 1997, presented a radical challenge to all concerned with international development. He argues that many past errors in development have flowed from imbalanced power relationships between development ‘professionals’ and local communities. In order to really empower local communities through genuine participation in development processes there is a need for “personal, professional and institutional change.”

Inspired by this book I went on to read “The Aid Chain: Coercion and Commitment in Development NGOs,” published in 2007. The researchers use country case studies to look at the chain of aid money from donors in the UK, to UK NGOs, to partners and field offices in Uganda and South Africa. They draw the conclusion that increasing donor concern with rational management tools such as the logframe are limiting the possibility of local communities really participating in the process of formulating projects.

Reading the book it therefore seemed to me that, whilst rhetoric over the past few years has placed increasing emphasis on ‘participation’ in development, institutional change has been pulling in the other direction.

By running pilot projects prior to securing funding from institutional donors we have the time and the flexibility to develop a good working relationship with local partner organisations. We also have the time to really listen to communities, making sure that our projects respond to their vision for a developed community, not to what we think a developed community should look like.