CREATE! Improving the Lives of Women and Girls in Rural Senegal

By Louise Ruhr, Director of Development
CREATE! (Center for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology for the Environment)

Women in Diender getting water from tap provided by solar powered pump.

CREATE! Center for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology is working in six villages in rural Senegal helping the people living in those villages to meet basic needs in the areas of water acquisition and storage; local food production; and fuel wood conservation. We recently had the opportunity to post Elizabeth Larson, a senior at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, to the small village of Diender in southern Senegal for a one-month internship during her winter break. She lived in the village, worked alongside the women, and communicated with them in their local language. Following are some of Elizabeth’s reflections on the experience, the problems faced by the women and girls of the village, and the impact of the work that CREATE! is doing:

Access to Water

Before CREATE! installed a solar-powered pump at the communal well in Diender, women and girls devoted much time and effort each day to procuring the water their families needed for drinking and cooking. The pump greatly simplifies this task. In addition to making it easier and less time consuming to obtain water for household needs, the solar-powered pump also makes it possible for the women of the community to utilize a sustainable, gravity-fed irrigation system, which CREATE! helped them design, install and maintain. This irrigation system makes it possible for the women of Diender to adopt a community garden model. The use and maintenance of the solar-powered pump also requires that women assume accountability for keeping the pump in good running order and insuring that the village adopts responsible water use practices.

Community Garden Project

StoveTeam International Wins a “Purpose Prize”

http://www.aarp.org/giving-back/local-heroes/info-10-2011/2011-purpose-prize-winner-nancy-hughes.html

By Nancy Sanford Hughes, Founder
StoveTeam International

Editor’s Note: Nancy Sanford Hughes is one of five Americans to win a 2011 $100,000 Purpose Prize for making an extraordinary impact in an encore career.

These 34 volunteers had just returned from a stove-testing trip in Honduras.

We started helping local entrepreneurs to build stove factories four years ago by assisting Gustavo Peña, who now owns his own factory in El Salvador, and who has not only produced thousands of fuel-efficient stoves but has employed 15 individuals, educated his children, and established local scholarships.

I returned from Honduras in early November, where I worked with a new factory owner, Anibal Murcia, and the volunteers field-testing the Ecocina stove. On the morning of my departure, I received a call from Sanya who had already arrived.

“Nancy” she said, “There are five in the village who have been hospitalized for tuberculosis. Should we still go?”

The families in San Jose de las Lagrimas have lived where there has been NO water, and there are NO toilets and little work. In a squatters’ camp such as this, everyone is at risk for acute respiratory infection, and there are villages such as this one throughout the world.

The first house I visited was ten by twelve.

Sebastian Strangio: Is Microfinance Pushing The World’s Poorest Even Deeper Into Poverty? | The New Republic

Sebastian Strangio: Is Microfinance Pushing The World’s Poorest Even Deeper Into Poverty? | The New Republic.

December 14, 2011—Lamia Karim, associate director of the University of Oregon Center for the Study of Women in Society, quoted in The New Republic:

…“Skepticism of microfinance and its benefits, meanwhile, has migrated to the academy as well. Lamia Karim, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon and the author of Microfinance and Its Discontents, has questioned the claim that offering small loans directly to Bangladeshi women has been empowering. On the contrary, she has found women are often pressured to hand over loans to their husbands or male relatives. At the same time, microcredit agencies have created what she terms an “economy of shame,” in which the traditional role of women as bearers of “family honor” is used to leverage repayments—a key yardstick of MFIs’ success. (Grameen, for instance, proudly trumpets a loan recovery rate of close to 97 percent). To avoid the public shame of default, many women take out additional loans from different lenders, and quickly find themselves mired in a quicksand of debt.”…

Ending Hunger in Oregon: 2012 Food Security Summit

Chameleons, Goats, and Horses—The Molo Wool Project (FKSW)

by Gwen Meyer, co-founder
Friends of Kenya Schools and Wildlife

Anastasia and some of her creations.

Last November, I wrote about the Molo Wool Project, an activity that our NGO Friends of Kenya Schools and Wildlife (FKSW) supports in Kenya. FKSW has assisted the 35 members of the Karunga Women’s Group, participants in this project, with skills training in the fiber arts and business development. In 2010, a $1000 loan from FKSW assisted the group to start a tree nursery. Since 2007 they’ve earned more than $26,000 from their hand-knitted products and income from the seedlings is now beginning to bring the group a second source of revenue. In February, we interviewed some of the participants to see how the project is impacting their lives.

The Molo Wool Project: One Member’s Story

Since picking up knitting needles just three years ago, 54-year-old Anastasia Njuguna has seen her natural talent and creativity emerge to make her one of the most prolific knitters in the group. She is also one of the top earners. The quality of her work is exceptional and her creations include chameleons, dogs, horses, goats, angora goats, pigs and antelope. She doesn’t use patterns. Her story about learning to knit a chameleon is illustrative, not only of her talent, but of her determination to better her life.

“My name is Anastasia Watiri Njuguna. When I joined the group, I knitted sweaters but I didn’t know how to knit animals. My first attempt on chameleons I came up with chameleons that were discredited because the legs were straight. And I was told ‘no, no, no, they must have some fingers and things like that.’ So when I did the next one, I had some feet, but I was told ‘no, this looks like a bird’s feet.’ That’s when I decided I wanted to learn what a chameleon looks like.

“So the first day, I went to the forest and I didn’t find one. The second day I didn’t succeed, but on the third day, I found the chameleon. So I took it to a neighbor’s house and tried to learn everything about the structure of its body, the way it walks, and all that and after that I was comfortable with the chameleon.”

THE COST OF CARE | A study finds placing one child in day care costs as much as paying tuition at the University of Oregon

THE COST OF CARE | A study finds placing one child in day care costs as much as paying tuition at the University of Oregon.

Chronicle Article about Penn State Cover-Up

November 10, 2011—By Claire Potter (The Chronicle)

Some of you may not want to read this article, because of its graphic references to the crimes that took place on the Penn State campus. But this is an incredibly important feminist analysis of the situation, and we wanted to share it with you.

The Penn State Scandal: Connect the Dots Between Child Abuse and The Sexual Assault of Women on Campus
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2011/11/1401/