throwsomethingback
Blog entry: These Women
18 August 2011
I am on placement with the Union of Women's Groups (UGF/CDN) in Burkina Faso because of my strong interest in women’s rights.
In our first week in the capital of Burkina Faso, dedicated to induction and planning, we were given four main objectives for our three month placement:
- Increase sales of the shea butter and dried mangoes that
UGF/CDN members produce - Create a website for UGF/CDN
- Women’s rights advocacy work
- Primary healthcare awareness
Although the first week was daunting (we had to plan our three months before we even visited where we were going to be working)
it was also an exciting week as we felt like we had a lot of freedom and flexibility with the direction of our work.
When we arrived at UGF/CDN in Réo, we soon realised that the main objective for the Co-ordinator of UGF/CDN was the marketing and sales of the shea butter and dried mangoes that they produce here.
At our training weekend, and in the communication we’d received from International Service, it was stressed that we had been placed with our projects in order to assist them and serve them in whatever area they felt was the most important.
This meant that for the first few weeks I was slightly disappointed in the work I was doing as our sole focus was marketing the products and searching for overseas buyers. It felt that the selling of these products was an end in itself. I had not seen the benefits for the members of UGF/CDN as a result of sales and it seemed as if a lot of the profit had to go back into renewing Fairtrade and organic certification.
However, my perception on all of this changed dramatically on the Friday of our seventh week in Burkina Faso.
We’d made friends with an American Peace Corps volunteer who is also living in Réo. She is fluent in French (none of us UK volunteers are) and so we’ve co-opted her onto our team as an ad hoc translator. We’d arranged to have a meeting with her and two of the female members of staff from the UGF/CDN office to discuss the problems that the women face.
We were ready for our meeting at 9am. To our surprise, 30 other members of UGF/CDN – women who work to produce the shea butter and dried mangoes – also turned up ready to chat.
We discussed the main problems that they face in their day to day life. It became clear that poverty is the biggest obstacle to the women here achieving a better life for themselves and their children.
They spoke about the tension that can exist in families when a husband is the only earner but can struggle to afford school fees and medicine for their children when they’re ill. They went on to explain that a lot of women experience inequality within the family environment because they often can’t earn money to support their family in the same way as their husband.
The discussion was incredibly moving and I felt like I was finally discovering the real reason I’d come to Burkina Faso. The women here are unbelievably strong and deal daily with extremely difficult situations. I left the meeting feeling hopeful however as many of the women mentioned how the money they make through UGF/CDN helps to alleviate their problems.
It’s remarkable just how much of a difference a small amount of money can make to a woman’s life here and it is with the help of UGF/CDN that the women are able to support their families better.
This meeting helped me realise that actually the income generating activities that UGF/CDN manage have a dramatic and measurable positive impact on the people they aim to support.
It is difficult to believe that women in Burkina Faso will have equal status to men very soon. But it will never be realised until women can survive financially without men and it’s hopeful that organisations like UGF/CDN are working to achieve that.
http://throwsomethingback.wordpress.com/Find out more about the work of UGF at their website