By Allyn Gaestel
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| Program participants in Rwanda learn sustainable agribusiness skills at Women for Women International’s Commercial Farming Initiative and other agriculturally-based projects. (Photo credit: Les Stone) |
5 March 2010 [MediaGlobal]: Women in post-conflict Rwanda are working with Women for Women International, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting development for women survivors of conflict, to improve all aspects of their lives through the Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI). The CIFI program creates links between the public, private, and nonprofit sector to empower women as autonomous economic actors. CIFI will work with 3000 Rwandan women over a three-year implementation period.
Women for Women International leased land from the government of Rwanda for 20 years to start a co-operative farm for women in Kayonza. The women on the farm must first complete a year-long training program that teaches them about their rights, farming techniques, and business. They then are allocated a plot of land for their own sustenance farming and a section of the larger co-op to produce commercial crops. The commercial crops are then sold together to a produce exporter, and the women earn their own sustainable income.
Zainab Salbi, CEO of Women for Women International, explained the rational of the program to MediaGlobal “It stems from the whole idea that women are 70 percent of the farmers in the world, producing 50 percent of the food in the world, and actually about 90 percent of the major staples in the world, earning only 10 percent of the income and owning less than 2 percent of the land. So there’s a problem here.” Salbi continued, “the whole idea of the organic commercial farming initiative is that, well let’s look into innovative ways in which we can increase her income, goal number one, give her access to land control, goal number two, while teaching her about her rights, goal number three.”
These three goals integrate a central theory at the root of Women for Women International’s work. Salbi said, “I think we need to evolve the discussion of women’s economic empowerment to saying that it has to be parallel to her education empowerment.” Multi-faceted engagement is essential to addressing the multiple issues that hinder women’s lives. Salbi explained, “Her making more money is not necessarily a precursor for her not having violence in her life or stopping her child from getting married at a child age. Her making more money is a good step, it’s a huge step, but it’s not the ultimate solution.”
The CIFI program looks to take women’s economic empowerment beyond simply making petty cash to enabling women to make a sustainable, lasting income. Land access and control is an important part of taking women’s economic empowerment to the next level. Owning land is important not only to address international economic disparity between the sexes, it also makes immediate social change in women’s lives. Women for Women International works with the most marginalized communities—women who have survived conflict and are also economically disenfranchised. These women are often looked down on by their communities, but when they become land owners people immediately treat them with more respect. Salbi described, “Being a land owner, you immediately are considered in many contexts a full citizen, a citizen that is respected.” Owning land also safeguards women from inheritance disputes. Many women do not inherit their husband’s land if the husband dies, but if women are themselves the landowners, no one can take that from them.
Once women own land, they often form co-operatives similar to the one Women for Women International owns in Kayonza. The women learn how to manage the co-op and how to effectively produce goods for market. This ensures the lasting impact of the project, something many development projects overlook. Oftentimes, when organizations finish a project cycle, the community where they worked has difficulty maintaining the growth they had sustained. The CIFI program on the other hand emphasizes women’s empowerment and capability to run their own co-operatives, and within five to seven years the organization hopes to turn the management of the main co-op to women leaders. Potential leaders have already been identified and are undergoing training to prepare them for such a role.
Another important aspect of the program is the engagement of the women’s community with men leaders. Salbi said, “I’m a big advocate for more efforts and more focus on men’s awareness about women’s rights. There is so much effort to talk about women’s rights to women, but not much effort to talk about women’s rights to men.” Women for Women International holds training sessions for the men leaders from the women’s communities and over four weeks trains them about women’s rights and issues. They then link them with opportunities to share their new perspective with other men. Men leaders are the targets of this program because Women for Women International cannot currently afford to train all of the husbands. But by engaging leaders and encouraging them to spread the message they are able to influence the thinking of more male members of society.
The one aspect of empowerment and autonomy that remains out of reach for the moment is connecting women directly with the commercial buyers. Commercial buyers do not want to deal with the 1,000 women farmers individually and the co-op leaders are not prepared to negotiate deals on their own. Hopefully in the future educated businesswomen can take on this role, but for the moment Women for Women International’s Rwandan staff negotiates the deals. However, the national staff is composed solely of Rwandans, so working for the business side of Women for Women International provides an opportunity for educated Rwandans to use their skills to benefit the community.
Women face layered obstacles to empowerment and equality, but the CIFI program is designed to give women the tools to address their numerous hindrances in tandem and provides a holistic response to empower women.
