Balcha, a 36-year-old widow, has brought us to her home here in the Ethiopian community of Mallima Bari as a sort of bench mark—a way for us to understand where she is in her life at this moment and where she’s determined to go now that she has access to irrigation and the support of a network of other small farmers like herself.

“I will reconstruct my house and show you a better house,” says Balcha firmly. “When I change my house, I will make you coffee.” In Ethiopia, ceremoniously serving guests coffee—three piping hot cups per person—is an important social tradition.

Recently, Balcha joined a group participating in a project launched by Oxfam America’s partner, Sustainable Environment and Development Action, or SEDA. Tapping a well that they helped dig and that SEDA and Oxfam outfitted with a pump and pipes, Balcha and 34 other farmers are funneling water to nine hectares of  land--about 24 acres, or a little more than half an acre each. Now, at last, they are free from worry about whether the rain will come on time and in sufficient quantity to guarantee their harvests. With a flick of a switch, they have water on demand—water to feed their crops and build their dreams.

Sitting in front of a field crowded with tall corn, Balcha beams with a surety that would not have been possible a year or so ago. Grief consumed her then: Her oldest child, a 9-year-old boy, had drowned one day while she was away working as a laborer. His dream had been to go to school and he had begged her to send him. But Balcha didn’t have the means.

“He asked me, ‘please, my mom, buy me an exercise book,” she recalled. Her answer? “Next year I can buy you an exercise book and clothes, but this year we don’t even have food.”

Two months later, she said, the terrible accident happened.

In the year that followed, burdened by needs that she could barely meet, Balcha said she thought about leaving her family and running away.

“I was confused,” she said softly.

It was around then that she learned of the irrigation project and the opportunity to join it.

“I was suffering before I joined this project because I didn’t have my husband. I didn’t have any support,” said Balcha. ”Now I have clothes for my body, food for my stomach, and my field is in good condition. When you are hungry, you can’t think of getting satisfied. When you are thirsty you can’t think of getting enough water. But now I’m satisfied.”

A voice for many

Balcha’s story speaks for others in a district where many rural residents make their living by raising animals and cultivating crops on fields fed only by rain. But it’s a hard life—and sometimes an impossible one. In this Central Rift Valley, severe food shortages are a frequent problem.

Without money to put into better production—fertilizer for plants, and infrastructure for irrigation—farmers can’t easily coax much from their land. Instead, like Balcha, they rent their fields to investors who can afford the technology to reap bountiful harvests. And sometimes, small farmers become day laborers on land that is theirs, working for someone else’s profit instead of their own.

But for the group now tilling this 24-acre plot, a reliable source of water could change their lives and the lives of their families. The project is part of a broader Oxfam America water program, set to run through 2020, that works with communities and local partners to help some of the poorest Ethiopians in moisture-stressed regions access water for their fields and animals and manage the resource in a sustainable fashion. With water comes food—and resilience.

Here, in Mallima Bari, the hope is that farmers will begin to cultivate valuable market crops—onions, tomatoes, green peppers, cabbages—that could boost their incomes. From the sale of their harvests, participants, who have formed the Mallima Gale Small-Scale Irrigation Co-op, will pool 10 percent of their earnings toward keeping the irrigation enterprise running. One of the biggest costs is fuel, now running at about 17 birr per liter—close to $4 a gallon. It takes about six liters of fuel each time a farmer pumps water through a half-acre field.

Strength in community

But it’s not just the pump and water that have brightened prospects for Balcha, it’s the deeper connection she has made with her neighbors in the irrigation group and the spirit of cooperation.

“We have very good collaboration,” says Balcha, noting that she had her fields plowed with the help of co-op members and their oxen. Ethiopians measure their land in hectares. One hectare is nearly equal to 2.5 acres. Balcha’s irrigated plot of corn measures a quarter hectare. In addition, she has a half-hectare of rain-fed corn and a quarter hectare of Ethiopia’s staple grain, teff, which is also dependent on the rain.

New agricultural techniques she learned through SEDA could help her crops do better than they have in the past, and the results so far have made her optimistic. She is planting her corn in rows now instead of broadcasting it loosely, and expects the December harvest will produce enough to feed her family as well as some to sell.

“Physically, it looks healthy,” says Balcha. “When you look at it, you get encouraged.”

And with that feeling of encouragement comes the taste of possibility: For Balcha, that means school for her children—an opportunity she never had.

“Had I had an education, I would have been someone better than I am now,” says Balcha. “I’m in darkness myself. I want them to be in light.”

It’s dim inside, lit only by the gray afternoon light streaming through the door. But it’s ample enough for me to study their faces— solemn and engrossed—as they listen to their chairwoman, Meshu Babure, tell how this group, whose name means “love” in Afan Oromo, came to be—and how it is now changing the lives of its 150 members.

Outside, the bustle in the association’s compound in Oine Chefo Umbure has stopped for the moment as everyone takes cover. A small crew of men—with the women’s help—has been mixing ce­ment and hauling rocks for the foundation of yet another new building, this one to house the diesel-powered grain mill Jalala recently bought with support from a group of European ambassadors’ spouses who had visited the organization. The association will use the mill to grind grain for their commu­nity and generate income for their members.

A hum of activity seems to define the place. Along with the grain mill, the Jalala women are constructing a building to serve as a store for the community, because the market that most people frequent is a long distance off. Across the yard, the frame of a small office building rises next to the grain bank, and sitting in the center of the grow­ing complex is a mud-walled poultry facility. Beyond the compound, with the help of the Center for Development Initiatives, or CDI, an Oxfam partner, Jalala has orchestrated the construction of a school for the com­munity where none had been before. It was to open in September for students through grade four.

The women of Jalala are working this magic in a corner of Shashemene, a district about 155 miles south of Ethiopia’s capital where a drought in 2008 severely hindered the ability of families to feed themselves and left 46 children dead. Food shortages continue to be a problem here, as most people survive by raising animals and farm­ing small plots of land. In August, hope for a healthy harvest hides some of the sorrow that earlier hardship bred: fields of green stretch to the horizon with the promise that maize and wheat may soon fill grain banks that community members established in re­cent years with the help of CDI and Oxfam.

Much, though, is dependent on the rain— will there be enough to feed the crops?— and on people’s good health to carry on with the hard physical labor a subsistence life demands. As elsewhere in Africa, HIV/ AIDS has taken a toll in this region, leaving people weak and many children orphaned.

It was that sweeping problem that first launched the Jalala Women’s Association and where Meshu Babure heard the earliest whispers of what has now become her call­ing: to better the lives of women—and their families—in the communities around her.

A woman with an education

Babure had completed high school—the only woman in her community to do so— when officials from the local government approached her for help in educating households about HIV and family plan­ning. Together with her sister-in-law, Basha Dachasso, Babure set out on her mission, and the pair was soon joined by two other women. That was nine years ago—in 2001.

Their task expanded when the district’s women’s affairs department decided to get a better understanding of poverty in the area and asked the team to register the names of poor women. As they went, the team picked up new members, growing from 10 to 15, until one day they found themselves col­lected under a massive oda tree—treasured among Oromia people for a canopy broad enough to shelter whole gatherings from the harsh African sun. There, Jalala’s true work was born: The women decided to turn their attention to the poverty that saddled so many of their neighbors.

“I was touched by a woman with a very severe problem—a woman holding a child on her chest and carrying firewood on her back to the market,” says Babure.

Soon, the group decided to start pooling their money to build a small fund from which members could take loans or draw in times of need. By 2007, the women had man­aged to stash away 4,000 birr—or about $245—and their ranks had grown to 50. Meanwhile, they had also persuaded the local government to give them access to about six acres of land that they started farming. This year they harvested both po­tatoes and teff, Ethiopia’s staple grain, and have continued to nurture a small plantation of enset, a drought-resistant plant that is a bulwark against hunger.

So far, they have plowed the income they have earned back into their association, using a chunk of it, for instance, to construct the poultry building. But as other organiza­tions have donated goods to Jalala—heif­ers and seedlings—the group in turn has distributed them among its members.

As Babure retraces all these steps, mem­bers quietly pass around a stack of photos. One in particular stands out—proof of the determination that drives them. It shows a woman marching through the furrows of a field, guiding an ox-drawn plow as it digs deep into the earth. It’s work that men usu­ally do. But the women of Jalala manage just fine.

Bucking tradition

That independence, though, came at a price. Some of the women’s husbands objected to their wives joining Jalala, which has also worked to change harmful tradi­tional practices in the community—like polygamy. One member showed up at a meeting with blood streaming from her head: her husband had beaten her to pre­vent her attendance. She came anyway.

Early on, Babure herself was threatened, too, for talking about the rights of women, promoting family planning, and discussing the problems of polygamy and the eco­nomic burden it places on families.

“Some people said, ‘We will try to kill you,’” she recalls, knowing she would have to en­dure intimidation to achieve her goals. But Babure had a role model in Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathi, a Kenyan woman who had suffered head injuries when she was attacked for planting trees to protest the deforestation of her country. Babure heard about Maathi and found in­spiration in her determination and bravery.

Before the women of Jalala organized themselves, most stayed at home, taking orders from their husbands, says Babure, who, at 32, is not married. To encourage others to join their group, the Jalala women composed a rallying song based on some of their traditions. It’s about a fox, who rep­resents poverty. He threatens to enter the women’s houses and bite them. The only way to fend him off is for the women to come out of their houses and join in unity against him.

“If we come together and shout loudly, people will hear us,” says Babure. “If you shout alone, no one will hear you. They will think you are mad.”

The song worked. New members thronged to the group—and slowly attitudes shifted.

Now, the community views women in one of two ways, says Babure: Either as a member of Jalala, with all the strength and indepen­dence that confers, or as someone who is not a member. Though Babure’s brother still refuses to talk to her—he disapproves of the energy she is pouring into the associa­tion to the exclusion of all else—even her mother has joined Jalala. And, she notes, many of the members’ husbands are now pitching in to help when it comes time to till the fields.

“We showed we can work,” says Babure. “We can produce. We can make a change.”