On the edge of the Taffoga cooperative, in a clearing among the huge mango trees that populate the community, we are welcomed by about 30 women, who describe the horticultural work they are able to carry out with the support of Oxfam, through its local partner ATAD. In the vegetable plot they have planted cabbages, aubergines, gombo (a local vegetable), onions, and garlic. These will enable the women to improve the variety of their diet and they will be able to sell any surplus.
Ramata Zore stops for a few minutes to talk to us while her colleagues water and weed the plot. She is 25 and has 4 children to look after. And at the moment she is on her own, as her husband has gone to the Ivory Coast to look for work.
“The vegetable plot is a help to me, because what I get from it goes somewhere towards feeding my family,” she says. “If I sell some of the vegetables, I can buy millet, which is the staple part of our diet. Also, in these difficult times, we make a recipe based on millet with a few cabbage leaves, which the children love.”
But gardeners here face a daily struggle: Water.
“There isn’t enough water and the wells are drying up,” says Zore. “We’ve had to organize ourselves into two groups: one group does the watering one day and the other does it the following day. In fact…after a few hours of watering, the well is dry and we have to wait a while before we can fill up the buckets again”.
After we have been talking to her for a few minutes, we notice that the coming and going of the women up and down the rows is starting to slow. The four wells on the perimeter of the garden have dried up and the women are congregating around them with their buckets and watering cans, waiting for the water levels to rise again.
“I live in Taffogo and in spite of our having large fields for growing crops, we’ve only harvested four sacks of millet this year, compared with the 20 we can get in a normal year,” says Zore. “But it’s a long time since we had a normal year. Last year, the floods destroyed much of the harvest. We go from one catastrophe to another, either because of too much water or too little.”
“Before, when rain wasn’t in short supply, we had 15 small sheep and cattle,” Zore says. “But we’ve had to sell them all and have now only got one small goat left. As I’ve got nothing else, I’ll have to sell her to buy seeds for next season.”
How to feed her children is always on Zore’s mind.
“Often they tell me they’re hungry and all I can offer them is comfort,” she says. “If there’s something to eat, I give it to them, and if not, I ask the neighbors.”
“My dreams?” Zore asks, surprised at my question about her wishes for the future. “To have enough food to feed my family and a house built of bricks, instead of a shack like the one I live in now. I’d also like to keep up the vegetable plot for five years. Then, if I manage to find something else to do which will enable me to supplement my income, I’ll be able to start a small business. I want to carry on with the vegetable plot and earn money to help my children.”
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>Women, on every score, fall far behind.
No solution to poverty can endure without the full participation of women: They make up half the people on Earth.
To achieve that goal—to end poverty—we need to address discrimination and the uneven balance of power between men and women. At Oxfam, we support opportunities for women and girls to change the circumstances of their lives. We help them claim their rights, live free from violence, earn a decent income, get an education, become entrepreneurs, and make their voices heard. Guiding us is our belief in basic human rights, which includes the conviction that women—like men—have the capability to make a profound difference in the lives of their families, their communities, and their nations.
]]>The innovative Saving for Change program is based on the mobilization of savings in small (20 to 25 members) groups. This approach differs from credit-based microfinance in that group members put their own money—sometimes as little as 25 cents a week—into a savings pool which is then loaned out to group members to cover emergency expenses or to start a small business. Saving for Change is now helping half a million people (primarily women, and a few men in Cambodia) with a safe and convenient place to save money, and as a source of small loans.
“This is a population that has been scarcely touched by microfinance institutions and banks,” says Jeff Ashe, the director of Oxfam America’s Community Finance program. Ashe helped introduce the Saving for Change model to Oxfam America in 2005 after carrying out an evaluation of similar programs in Nepal, India, and Zimbabwe.
With support from a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Oxfam is studying participation in Saving for Change and how this program is helping people provide some financial stability and improve their lives. Early results from studies in Mali are showing that participation in a Saving for Change group provides a valuable buffer against shock – if a household member gets sick, money is available to cover medical costs that might otherwise tip a very poor family into destitution.
“Knowing that their family can fall back on a loan from Saving for Change to deal with an emergency helps reduce stress,” says Janina Matuszeski, research coordinator for Oxfam America’s Community Finance Program. She says that this financial confidence “helps a woman get her head up and say, ‘what’s next?’ and take some control over her financial future.”
Saving for Change is currently operating in Mali, Senegal, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Cambodia. In total, the members in these groups are currently saving more than $9 million. The money these groups save (plus the interest on loans) is distributed to the group members every year when they need it the most, usually just before the harvest when families need food and have back-to-school expenses.
“Saving for Change groups are now starting to be used as platforms to introduce ecological agriculture and business and leadership training,” Ashe says. “We also want to build on initiatives that the women have taken on themselves such as the formation of girls groups and the purchase of grain to tide the members over the ‘hungry season.’”
Saving for Change is continuing to attract members, form new groups, and study the effects of the program on group members. “The objective is to develop a mass-scale and replicable model for building village economies at a modest cost per villager,” says Ashe. “We’ll study the outcomes, and then disseminate this model broadly.”
]]>“Before we would use 100 francs to buy tea,” Diallo said after a group meeting at her home, while she was selling a small bag of cooking spices to a young boy waiting patiently in her doorway. “We would sit around and laugh and tease each other. We didn’t know that if we put our 100 francs together, we could do something really important.”
Saving for Change group members pool their savings, and borrow money to invest in small businesses. Selling foodstuff as Diallo does is quite common, as is selling phone cards, and buying and selling cloth and clothing. Members pay back their loans with 10 percent interest, and the money grows in the group fund for 12 months, when all the assets are disbursed to members equally, and a 12-month cycle starts again. Last fall at the end of the last cycle, each member got nearly $50.
Mariama Ly, a 38-year-old mother of four wearing a bright red head scarf that forms a perfect circle around her face, says she did really well this past year. “I bought new furniture for my house, a bicycle for my son, and I invested the rest in my business,” she says brightly.
Her enthusiasm is easy to understand when you hear her story: Unable to find any steady work in their village, called Bandafassi, Ly’s husband had to move to Dakar where he is a fisherman. It is a good 800 kilometers (just under 500 miles) away, so he only comes home for the annual Tabaski holiday, which marks the end of the Ramadan fasting period. He stays for a couple of weeks, handing over the money he has earned to support the family.
But the money rarely lasted a year, forcing Ly to buy much of the food and clothing for her family on credit. When her husband came home, Ly says “He dealt with all my debts, he had to go around the village paying it all back.” It was the source of stress in their relationship.
After she joined the Saving for Change group in her village, staff from an organization called La Lumière used a grant from Oxfam to teach her and the other members how to establish a saving fund, make loans to members, start their individual businesses, pay back the loans, and re-invest her profits.
Ly began selling dried fish, pepper, vinegar, and other spices around her neighborhood. She says she can now cover all her household expenses. And her relationship with her husband has completely changed. “He’s treating me really well,” she says proudly outside her small home, the only one in her neighborhood with new thatch on the roof. “We talk a lot, we talk things over together. Before he just did what he wanted, but now we discuss it first.
“He’s really happy that I take this responsibility. I get a lot of respect from him now, and it makes me really happy.” Best of all, she says, “when he comes back to the house, there is just peace and love between us.”
Her group president Diallo says harnessing the modest savings and energy of the group members has created similar changes for all of them. “Before we had no way to help ourselves, but now with just 100 francs a week we solve a lot of problems, and help our husbands and our children.” Now, instead of sitting around drinking tea and teasing each other, she says “We tease the men. We are handling all the expenses now, not them.”
]]>“Since I started with the group, my mind is more open,” she says proudly in front of her small home of mud bricks on a warm, windy March day. “I can manage lots of different things now.”
And she does. Inside her house she has little packages of spices she sells, along with smoked fish, on the dusty streets of Domba, her town in southern Mali. Once a week she goes to the market and sells there, but she has plenty of clients in her neighborhood, and she just goes door to door.
Mariko, who is 64 and has eight children, raises and sells chickens and shea nuts (which are processed into shea butter). Since she joined her Saving for Change group, she says she manages her shea nut business completely differently. “I don’t just sell my shea nuts for whatever I can get,” she says proudly, with the air of an experienced trader. “Now I know to wait until prices are higher, and I can get more money.” She says she appreciates having money for emergencies, to help sick relatives, or to pay for weddings or funerals.
Mariko is just one of 25 women in the Saving for Change group in Domba. They named the group Ikidia, the word for harmony in the local language, Bambara. The group was established in 2007, two years after Oxfam America launched its Saving for Change program in Mali. This group, like the 7,019 other groups in 2,625 villages in Mali, is organized to help women save their own money in a safe place and make loans to each other from a common fund at 10 percent a month. Each member makes a deposit each week (it is roughly 50 cents), and the group saves, loans, and makes interest on the group funds. Since women in rural Mali rarely finish school, they don’t keep elaborate written records. Each woman keeps track of her own and one other member’s loans and payment schedule, a sort of financial buddy system. And they all remember the total in the cash box at the end of each meeting.
Once a year the amount saved plus interest earned is divided up equally among the group members. The funds are usually disbursed right before the harvest, when families in this agricultural area are most financially stressed. The Ikidia group fund disbursed about $46 to each member at the end of the first year. Soumba Doumbia, the group’s president, says she used this money to pay all the school fees and buy clothes and books for her seven children, who were just heading back to classes.
There are now 250,000 people involved in Saving for Change groups in 6,000 villages in Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, and Cambodia. Collectively, these groups have saved over $4 million, and the average participants earn 20 percent annually on their deposits.
This rapid growth, achieved in just four years, is remarkable, says John Ambler, Oxfam America’s senior vice president for programs. “A traditional microcredit institution might take eight or 10 years just to reach 10,000 borrowers,” he says. One reason why Saving for Change is taking off so quickly is because women can form groups with fellow villagers in which they save and invest their own money. The groups need not have any relationship with a microfinance institution like a bank. This is helping the program reach the poorest women who would not otherwise be able to borrow money. Most banks consider them to be too big a risk.
Once Oxfam and our partners start one group in a village, others can form on their own, with little or no outside support. On average, it only costs Oxfam about $20 per Saving for Change member to start and train a group to manage its own operations. Women who learn how to form a group can then help others in nearby villages do the same thing, at no additional cost to the program.
If Saving for Change continues to grow at the current rate, the number of participants should double in the next two years. Doumbia says the Ikidia group members are benefiting not just from increased income, easier access to credit, and all the material improvements. They are also building self-confidence and dignity. “Before this group, if we had money problems, we would ask our friends for help, but they could not always say yes,” Doumbia says. “We would have to go into nearby towns and borrow money. We had no hope.
“But now we can find money to solve our problems through the group.”
]]>They were featured speakers on a week-long Oxfam America tour, which passed through five US cities on its way from New Mexico to Missouri. Inspired by Oxfam's Sisters on the Planet initiative—and supported by groups like CARE and the League of Women Voters—the tour focused on the human face of climate change here and abroad, with an emphasis the ways the US can help vulnerable communities survive the crisis.
"Pollution, greenhouse gases, they don't respect boundaries," said Voré Gana Seck, the speaker from Senegal. "This is a global problem that needs global solutions."
Sharon Hanshaw, executive director of Coastal Women for Change and one of Oxfam's Sisters on the Planet, spoke about her personal losses from Hurricane Katrina, as well as the storm's lasting effects on her home town of Biloxi, Mississippi.
Speaking at the Kansas City, Missouri, public library, Hanshaw explained that it's not just past hurricanes that concern her community, but the ones ahead, which are predicted to intensify. "This year we've had four hurricanes in the last six months," she said. "Gustav was called a dud, but it still flooded our houses."
In Biloxi, she said, hurricanes not only wreak physical damage, but also add to the burdens of people already among America's poorest.
"Times were hard pre-Katrina, and now it's even worse; prices have gone up," said Hanshaw. "We still have people living in trailers, no healthcare, no childcare, no public library. We don't need a handout from the government. We need infrastructure to help our community live again."
Seck, Executive Director of Green Senegal and president of the international NGO coalition CONGAD, highlighted the common ground between Senegal and the Gulf Coast. In both places, she said, the poorest families are the ones to bear the burden.
At an event at the Omaha, Nebraska, public library, Seck compared the effects of climate change to those of a war: "You can't produce enough food, you can't harvest. You don't have enough money. You can't send your kids to school."
For local farming families, she said, a decrease in rainfall means that staple crops like rice, millet, and vegetables often fail to reach maturity, leaving families with less food to eat and fewer extra crops to sell. To earn a better living, some of these farmers migrate to already-crowded cities like Dakar, where floods and poor sanitation are leading to an increase in water-borne diseases like cholera.
Others join the ranks of the "climate refugees": teens and young adults who leave their villages for Spain or the Canary Islands, looking to earn money to send to their families back home. Hundreds of these young people have died while attempting ocean crossings in small, fragile boats.
"In Algeciras, Spain, there is a burial ground called the "Cemetery of the Unknown People," said Seck. "These are our environmental refugees. They are the unknown."
Despite these hardships, both speakers' organizations are leading efforts to help their communities survive the crisis.
"The first thing we have to do is be resilient," said Hanshaw, whose group distributes hurricane preparedness kits—containing fresh water, food, insurance papers, and flashlights—to Biloxi seniors and families. They're also offering affordable child care options to help women in the community return to work.
Hanshaw's organization also trains local women to go to Washington, DC, and "tell the stories that are not being told." Their message to legislators: "We're still here. We're going to be here. And climate change affects all of us."
Seck's group teaches Senegalese farmers new techniques that help crops grow in a drier climate, like drip irrigation systems and faster-maturing seeds. Seck showed photos of the successful projects in action: first a riot of green seedlings, then tall plants in orderly rows, flourishing beneath a wide blue sky.
So far, she said, these innovative methods are only in place in a few villages. But with the support of wealthier countries like the US, projects like these could help farmers throughout the region.
Many audience members at these events signed up for Oxfam's online climate change action team, which provides ways to directly influence US legislators on the issue.
For some, the speakers' words brought a change in perspective. "I came here expecting to hear about Africa, but I didn't expect to hear Sharon's story, right in our backyard," said Lillian Pardo, a retired physician who attended the Kansas City speaking event. "You don't see this on the news."
Andrew Jameton, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, was the last to speak in a question and answer session in Omaha. "I want to fight this, and a lot of people feel the same way, but it will be a tough century," he said, adding that, because of the speakers' words, "I'm not optimistic—but I'm hopeful."
]]>Farmers in this area are typically informed that the government has conceded their land to the mine and that there is nothing they can do about it. Joanna knew better. "I know my rights, and I knew the law would take its course," she said.
Manu had attended a training session with Oxfam America's partner WACAM, where she learned that farmers can only be removed from their land if they have been compensated for it. This helped her make a strong argument. "I told the court that I was there before the company came and that it had not compensated me. So the company has no right to push me off this land."
"And I am still farming there," Manu said, smiling just a little. "I learned this in my training, and it is thanks to this new knowledge that I could do this."
WACAM's training not only helped Manu defend her own rights and farmland, but also helped her become one of the key organizers in her community, Dumasi, a small collection of mud and concrete houses piled on the side of a hill on the road between two larger mining towns, Prestea and Tarkwa. Farmers line the road selling tomatoes and yams as trucks and cars blast past in the dust and heat. The forest looms over Dumasi; dark green surrounds the hardwood trees and small fields that farmers hack out of the dense brush.
Open-pit gold mining has had serious negative effects ranging from housing damage caused by the explosives used to blast apart the pit to reveal ore, just over 300 yards from the village, to pollution of the local drinking water source, the Aprepre River, in 2004 and 2006. Again, training from WACAM has helped Manu and her neighbors push the company to respect their rights and its obligations.
After the mine spilled cyanide into the stream in 2004, Manu and her father immediately collected water samples and dead fish, and sent them to WACAM and Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "WACAM taught us that cyanide is extremely poisonous, but that exposure to the sun reduces its toxicity," Manu explained. "Usually when we complain to the EPA they take 10 days to come here, so that is why we had to get the samples right away." WACAM helped secure medical care for sick villagers and convened a press conference so the villagers could pressure the company to clean up the mess and compensate people affected by the poison. WACAM and another legal aid organization funded by Oxfam America, CEPIL, helped the citizens of Dumasi take the company to court, and they are awaiting a decision.
Efforts like this have helped the people of Dumasi force the company to halt the blasting that hurled rocks into their houses and cracked their foundations. For now the mining has stopped while the company tries to relocate the village—but first it has to negotiate a deal with a group of citizens who will no longer allow the government and mining company to take advantage of them.
The training WACAM provided for the people of Dumasi has helped them defend their rights, but it is also changing the way they think about themselves and others. Manu realized that she can be a leader, someone who can make a difference in her village and the world. "After this training, I can see how important education is, so I am enrolled in school," she said. "I want to be a political leader, maybe a member of parliament."
Manu's motivations and sense of responsibility go well beyond her village. "I see fellow human beings as I see myself, and if they can't defend their rights, then I have to help them," she said. "I am saving humanity."
]]>She was also furious. "This should not happen to us," she said later, referring to the residents of her village of Teberebie, which had been relocated to accommodate a new mining operation in the area. "What did we do wrong?"
Mr. Baidoo had been walking away from a confrontation between farmers and a military force when he was wounded. The protest arose after the military began blocking a road the farmers used to travel to their fields where they grow cocoa and palm trees, yams, cassava, and other fruits and vegetables. Having recently been denied this route through the mine property, and tired of the alternative—a longer, 12-mile round trip on foot—the entire town turned out in February 2006 to demand access to the road. Baidoo and one other man were shot, and several people were beaten.
Amoateng immediately called WACAM, the environmental and human rights organization partly funded by Oxfam that had trained her and others in the community. "I reported that Anthony had been shot, and was lying in his own blood," she said. After WACAM's director Daniel Owusu-Koranteng called the head of the AngloGold Ashanti mine company, Baidoo got the medical care he needed to survive at the company's expense. After recovering for eight months in the hospital he is now disabled.
Teberebie is a farming community in the Wassa West District of Ghana's Western Region. The community was resettled in 1991 to make room for the AngloGold Ashanti, Iduapriem Mine, which is now producing over 300,000 ounces of gold per year. It is just one of many scenes of violence over the last several years, as Ghana has thrown open its doors to foreign companies and relaxed its rules on investment to encourage more mining. The shootings in Teberebie were just two of 15 reported by the BBC in 2005 and 2006.
Amoateng is now a leader of the Concerned Farmers' Association of Teberebie, which consists of 35 farmers who have worked with WACAM to learn about their human rights under Ghana's constitution and Minerals and Mining Act. She is leading this group in a legal case against AngloGold, alleging non-payment of compensation for their lost farms, which are now buried under piles of waste rock.
Amoateng, 30, said she is now more aware of how the government and mining companies in the area are violating the rights of people in her community—and what to do about it. "Because of WACAM, I now know where to go and who to contact in case of any problem in the community," she said. Her recent activities have included leading a march to the nearby town of Tarkwa, where radio, television, and newspaper journalists interviewed her about the situation facing farmers in Teberebie.
In Ghana, as in many other countries in Africa and other parts of the world, women do not usually lead political struggles. Speaking out publicly is simply out of the question for most women in communities affected by mining in Ghana. Men are normally perceived as the voices of the community. But with the right training and personal ambition, women like Amoateng are showing they are strong leaders.
To more effectively represent her community, Amoateng is presently studying to finish high school and prepare for university. She aspires to be a lawyer and an advocate for women and children.
Her concerns center on basic justice for Teberebie. "The 1992 constitution and the Minerals and Mining Act are my closest friends now," Amoateng said. "I don't want the mining company to cheat my community. And I know my rights as a citizen living in a mining community."
Amoateng's work is a good example of how WACAM uses education as a tool to empower mining communities in their struggle to improve their living conditions. Her training with WACAM has strengthened her community as well as her own ability to represent her neighbors. "This has made me very powerful in the sight of both the mining company, and the men in my community," she said. "I am proud of myself."
Jerry Mensah-Pah is a radio and newspaper journalist based in Tarkwa, Ghana, and has been covering human rights violations related to communities affected by mining for four years. He works for WACAM in the Western Region of Ghana as its assistant programs officer.
]]>TONUS initiated the credit-led groups in 1997.
Sitting behind his desk, cluttered with papers and files wilting in the heat and humidity of Mali’s August rainy season, Doumbia had gone over the figures a thousand times. He kept coming to the same conclusion, and it was one that made him smile: Despite having to save their own money, Saving for Change works for poor women.
"In the first eight months, the SFC groups had 3,427 members, and the credit microfinance groups had 1,983 members after eight years," he said. By the end of August 2006, the trend had continued: 5,894 Saving for Change members and 2,144 credit group members.
Not only did Saving for Change have more participants, but the groups were performing better. "The number of participants is higher, the repayment rate is higher. There is a lower total of overdue loans," he said. "The voluntary savings are as much as the credit groups have saved in eight years."
Doumbia said he was at first surprised at these results. "When we started SFC I did not think we would see these results by helping women make loans with their own money. The savings rate is a lot lower in the classic, credit-led finance system, and since we began that in 1997 we have not seen much saving. So at the beginning we were worried because we did not have outside capital, and women had to save their own money."
But after just a few weeks, he could see a big difference in the performance of Saving for Change. "One month into it I was impressed," he said. "Since then I have been watching the stats. I held a meeting with the credit-led finance team to show them the results so far. It has now been almost nine months and the savings are almost the same as the credit-led finance system—about 8 million CFA francs (about $14,500) for Saving for Change groups versus 9 million CFA ($16,300) in savings for the credit program after eight years."
Since August of 2006 the trend has continued. By the end of March 2007 the Saving for Change groups savings had jumped to over $186,000, just over five times the amount saved by the credit groups over eight years. Savings for Change groups have twice as much money loaned out and working in the community, and a repayment rate over 99 percent.
The numbers in this case do not lie, and they prove something significant: Poor people can save money. Doumbia says that the higher rate and amount of voluntary savings can be attributed to the organization of the Saving for Change groups, not necessarily the participants’ level of income. To Doumbia, this shows a weakness in the credit-led system: "Their savings are low, not due to lack of money, but because the system does not work as well," he said.
Doumbia says the women make it all possible. "The Savings for Change women are at the center of the program," Doumbia said. "It all starts with them. They mobilize their own savings, pay back their loans, and manage the groups."
| Saving for Change Groups April 2005 - March 2007 | Credit-Led Finance Groups October 1997 - March 2007 | |
|---|---|---|
| Group members | 12,410 | 2,248 |
| Total deposits | $186,432 | $34,431 |
| Outstanding loans | $112,914 | $55,938 |
| Number of overdue loans | 4 | 86 |
| Amount of overdue dept | $280 | $5,206 |
| Repayment rate | 99.75% | 90.70% |
But once they know this they take serious action, learning how to prevent the disease by sleeping under nets treated with insecticide, and filling in puddles and other places where mosquitoes can breed. They take special care to help pregnant women get access to government-sponsored prenatal care, which includes a free mosquito net.
A recent survey of villages where Saving for Change groups have been formed is showing that 75 percent of members understand that mosquitoes transmit malaria, while only half of non-members in the communities know this. Seventy percent of members knew that mosquito nets are an effective way to prevent malaria, compared to only 40 percent of non-members. More than half of members said they slept under a bed net the previous evening, compared to just 30 percent of others in the community. And more than 40 percent of Saving for Change members said they had purchased a bed net since joining a group, evidence that the availability of information about the value of bed nets contributed to changes in behavior.
Overall, malaria killed 22,000 people in Mali in 2005, and ranked third among all causes of death after respiratory infections and diarrheal diseases, according to the World Health Organization's latest figures. The death toll for children is particularly severe. Mali ranks 175 out of 177 countries in the rate of death from all causes of children under five, at 218 per 1,000, and malaria causes about 17 percent of those deaths.
"Malaria is a crucial problem in Mali," says Macky Doucouré, president of the non-governmental group CAEB, one of Oxfam's Saving for Change partners in Mali. "The majority of deaths of pregnant women are due to malaria. More women in Mali die from malaria than they do from AIDS...as many as die in childbirth."
The death toll is heavy, but so is the price to stay alive, as many families struggle to find money to transport sick people to clinics, and buy medication. "Some families have to spend as much as 60 percent of their income on health care," Doucouré said. This is why malaria is an important topic when it comes to community finance programs: nothing will destroy a family's assets like chronic illness.
Once women are organized into Saving for Change groups it is easier for them to work together to educate people in their village about malaria and take steps to prevent it. "It is a really big change for people to understand that there are things they can do in their own villages to prevent malaria," Doucrouré said.
He described one village where women in a Saving for Change group took some extraordinarily active steps. "They decided to create their own committee to help women prevent malaria, and encourage the use of insecticide impregnated mosquito nets at night while people are sleeping. Each night members of the committee would visit homes to make sure women and their children were sleeping under their mosquito nets, and they would even fine women not using the nets 50 CFA or maybe 100 CFA [10 or 20 cents]."
"Creating a committee to prevent and help people treat malaria is a significant innovation for these families and their village, and it was made possible by the Saving for Change group financed by Oxfam—it is something the women created themselves to deal with the problem, it did not come from outside the village."
]]>Mamadou Diedhiou, the school's director, takes the high enrollment as a compliment. "Our school district has one of the highest levels of attendance in the country," he says proudly. "And we are building schools all the time."
Four of Diedhiou's teachers have been using the Oxfam-funded GRA-REDEP peace education curriculum for the last three years, and others are learning about it and integrating it into their classes also. The teachers are seeing a real difference in the behavior of the students at Basembo Diandy: fewer fights, more tolerance, and more engagement with the faculty on school issues. The students understand what it is to be a citizen, says Pathé Diatta, one of the teachers. "When we used to raise the flag here most students weren't interested,"" he said in the school library. "But after we taught them about citizenship, they attend the flag raising every morning."
Citizens enjoy certain rights, and this is a key lesson taught in Professor Djibril Faye's class, held in one of the concrete block buildings, where there is a charcoal outline of the African continent on the back wall. The students, roughly 40 kids between 10 and 15, can name their basic rights: the right to live in peace, the right to medical care, the right to food.
And then the big one comes up: the right to an education. The discussion revolves around why some families don't let their girls go to school, just the boys. Many students don't understand the issue completely. When asked for reasons why a father might not allow a daughter to attend school, some think it might be because there is no money for clothing, transportation, or school fees.
But that is not it. Professor Faye wants them to discover the gender dimension of this human rights issue—a basic injustice based on the roles society imposes on females. "Maybe the father wants his daughter to work around the house, so when she gets married she will know what to do," one boy suggests. The unfairness comes out clearly to the students. Now they see why girls might be more likely to be kept home from school—a violation of their right to an education.
Seynabou Sène, a slim 13-year-old student, took the lesson to heart. "Girls need to go to school," she said after the class. "If my father told me I could not go to school, I would force him to take me so I can have a better future. I want to be a teacher."
]]>Between harvests, farmers have little available cash, so families struggle to find money for those necessities they do not produce themselves—clothes, soap, or even medicine if a child falls ill. So Djouri Konaré, a mother of six in her mid-40s, earns a little money by preparing rice flavored with tomatoes and piment, a super-spicy pepper, to sell once a week on market day. With little available cash, Konaré used to have to borrow ingredients from a food dealer, and repay him at whatever price he demanded at the end of the day. Profits were slim.
Konaré found a better option when Oxfam America's partner TONUS helped the women in N'Golofala form a savings group, pooling their deposits of just a few cents a week and then loaning each other the capital to invest in money-making ventures. It is part of Oxfam's Saving for Change program, established in 2005 and now reaching more than 24,000 women in Mali alone.
Konaré joined the group and borrowed enough to buy the ingredients for her business at a better price than the food dealer's. "Some days I can make 10,000 CFA [about $20]," she said in an interview in her home. After paying back her loan and interest, she can clear as much as $65 a month—nearly the average monthly income for Mali and a tidy sum for a rural woman with no assets.
Once a year the savings group divides up its assets equally among the members, and the women can use it to invest or buy necessities for their families. This year, Konaré's share was $18, and she used it to buy a sheep. "I bought a female, which had a baby, another female. Now I think I could sell the mother for about $30, so I am getting a lot for my $18."
There are currently about 40 women participating in three savings groups in N'Golofala. "We are seeing a lot of benefits," Konaré said. In addition to earning income raising livestock and through other forms of commerce, the women meet regularly and help each other with their businesses and discuss problems faced by the larger community, like malaria.
Malaria is one of the biggest problems in N'Golofala and many other villages in Mali—indeed, throughout much of Africa. With many families forced to devote a large proportion of their income to deal with health problems, reducing vulnerability to malaria is an essential way to fight poverty. After helping establish the savings groups, TONUS staff led eight training sessions to teach the women in the program how to prevent and treat the disease.
"Now I know how to treat children for malaria," says Konaré. "I am contributing to the better health of my family by helping my husband eliminate mosquito breeding areas, and I can buy treated bednets."
She and other women have even convinced village leaders to eliminate mosquito-breeding areas. This was a milestone for these women, who previously had never been consulted on village affairs and were not used to speaking in public. Before Saving for Change, women tended to defer to their husbands. "Now we know we have to do things ourselves," Konaré said. "The Saving for Change group has changed a lot for me."
Since the first Saving for Change groups were established, many of the women could see that it was a simple matter to help others start their own groups. In the village of Guilly, just 20 minutes from N'Golofala, a 30-year-old woman named Minata Coulibaly joined a group and then helped establish four others, recruiting 63 other women to the Saving for Change program. Of the 1,126 groups in Mali, 391 were formed spontaneously by the women themselves, and these 391 include nearly 8,000 members—all of whom have taken small steps toward big changes.
]]>