Tag Archives: women

03.09.18
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How a Tanzanian teen rejected child marriage for her dream job

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Memusi Saibulu storytelling at The Moth in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2018 (Credit: Liza Ramrayka)

This story first appeared on Medium.

As a schoolgirl in rural Tanzania, Memusi Saibulu was determined that becoming someone’s wife at the age of 14 would not be part of her life plan.

Growing up in the predominantly Maasai region of northern Tanzania, Memusi knew that her family would expect their daughter to follow tradition and give up her education in her early teens for married life. But the stellar student had other dreams: to continue with her schooling and eventually train to become a doctor.

Memusi, a quietly spoken teenager dressed in her school uniform of red sweater, red tie and black over-the-knee pleated skirt, says her mother had always encouraged her to study hard and do well at school. But her father, driven by cultural convention, had other plans — arranging a marriage and dowry for his daughter while she was still in primary school.

When Memusi told her favorite teacher that family expectations and prohibitive school fees meant she probably wouldn’t be continuing her education to secondary school, the instructor was concerned that such a bright student wouldn’t be given the opportunity to pursue her studies. Perhaps she could apply for a scholarship?

Then, just two days later, the man who was to be Memusi’s husband visited her family home. “The drunk son of my father’s friend,” is how she contemptuously describes the man who forced himself upon her that evening then urged her to leave her parents’ home for a life with him.

On her suitor’s next visit, Memusi felt angry and more confrontational. “You’re not going to get your crooked little legs in my bed,” she told her unwanted intended.

Memusi admits to feeling proud of herself about her defiance but also very scared: “What if he tells my father? What if he tells others in my community?” she thought to herself.

Meanwhile, thanks to the encouragement of her primary teacher, Memusi had secured a place at Orkeeswa School, a community-based secondary school in northern Tanzania that provides holistic education to high performing students whose families don’t have the financial means to pay school fees.

When Memusi received the acceptance letter for secondary school, her mother “jumped up and down” with excitement. Then Memusi took the letter to her father, which forced him to set aside the traditional path he’d envisaged for his daughter in favor of a different journey.

Memusi explained to him that marriage would be the death of her dreams. Secondary school would unlock myriad opportunities, she argued. She won her battle. Because of these strong opinions, says Memusi, she gained herself a bit of a reputation: “I am considered to be a role model for my community.”

Fewer than one per cent of girls in rural Tanzania continue their education to form five and A-levels. Memusi is currently studying physics, chemistry and biology as a form six student. She’s also served as student body vice president, a peer counselor and a leader in community service projects and extra-curriculum activities. Her dream, she says, is to become a general practice doctor who can treat people — particularly women and girls — in her community.

As Memusi shared her experience with others via The Moth storytelling project in Nairobi, Kenya, she was acutely aware of her choice to reject the role of child bride and rail against tradition. She concludes: “I don’t want to destroy culture but I want to change girls being married at a young age.”

Memusi Saibulu participated in ‘Stories of Women & Girls: The Moth in Nairobi’ in January 2018. https://www.themoth.org/

07.07.16
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Giving Girls a Second Chance at Education

This article first appeared on the Women & Girls Hub from News Deeply

A fast-track learning program in India is being scaled up to help 3 million young girls across developing countries stay in school. Udaan, a residential school for students aged 11-14, helps girls study instead of work or marry.

Teacher Maheshwari Verma (back left) works with Maya, 11, during language class at the Udaan Accelerated Learning Camp for girls near Hardoi, India, on Sept. 9, 2014. Photo by Erin Lubin/CARE

As the oldest of five children, 15-year-old Laxmi Pal grew up caring for her siblings and doing household chores in the rural Indian village of Kodanna in Uttar Pradesh, while her mother was out cleaning houses and her father struggled to find seasonal work on farms. But three years ago, Laxmi became the first member of her immediate family to attend school. Nine months later, she graduated from fifth grade and enrolled in a government secondary school to continue her education.

Like many adolescent girls growing up in rural India who never start or finish primary school, Laxmi envisaged a future of domestic work and early marriage. But instead, she was given a second chance at education through a fast-track learning course run by nonprofit organization CARE.

CARE’s Udaan program (Udaan means “to soar” in Hindi) compresses several years of primary school curriculum into nine months of accelerated learning. Launched in India in 1999, the Udaan residential school offers girls aged 11-14 the chance to quickly complete their education. The program is highly interactive, featuring learning by doing, educational games and group projects to keep the students engaged.

In addition to teaching language, math and environmental science, Udaan teachers help girls learn to question discriminatory practices and beliefs within their villages. Teachers also integrate activities such as morning assembly, where girls gather before class to recite poems, sing songs and perform skits. In their free time, girls play sports and learn to ride bicycles. (The latter is a skill that’s especially important, since the distance to schools is a major hindrance to girls’ education in rural India.)

Students of the Udaan Girls School work on a group exercise. The curriculum includes language, math and environmental science. Udaan teachers also interweave activities such as morning assembly, sports (volleyball, soccer), bicycle riding and computer skills. (Allen Clinton/CARE)

Students of the Udaan Girls School work on a group exercise. The curriculum includes language, math and environmental science. Udaan teachers also interweave activities such as morning assembly, sports (volleyball, soccer), bicycle riding and computer skills. (Allen Clinton/CARE)

Since CARE started Udaan with local partner Sarvodaya Ashram, more than 95 percent of the girls enrolled have passed the fifth-grade exam. Since 2011, the Udaan model has been rolled out to Odisha and Bihar states; in 2013, an Udaan school opened in theMewat district in Haryana state, approximately two hours from Delhi.

According to CARE, just one year of secondary education correlates to a 15 to 25 percent increase in future wages for young women.

At the United State of Women Summit in June, CARE announced a$15 million rollout of the Udaan Second Chances program as part of the U.S. government’s Let Girls Learn initiative. Launched by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in March 2015, the initiative is aimed at the estimated 62 million girls globally – half of them adolescents – who are not in school.

Over the next five years, the Udaan program will expand to reach 3 million girls across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan and Somalia. The program is supported by the U.S. government, ministries of education in individual countries, corporations, foundations and local partner organizations.

CARE argues that when girls are educated, all of society benefits. “Girls who attend school tend to delay marriage and pregnancy, are less vulnerable to disease, and are more likely to increase their own earning power for life,” said Joyce Adolwa, CARE’s director of girls’ empowerment, at the United State of Women Summit.

Brian Feagans, director of communications at CARE, says the program seeks to address lack of access to a relevant education for adolescent girls who are out of school or at risk of dropping out. “It helps them catch up through accelerated learning models and then transitions them back into schools at higher primary or lower secondary levels,” he says. “This is a comprehensive package of interventions that converge around education to create an integrated approach to girls’ empowerment.”

Udaan schools have been deliberately placed in the most disadvantaged areas, where the educational status, particularly for girls, is extremely low. Using the successful results of this model, CARE has advocated for the Indian government to adapt the Udaan curriculum into its state-run schools. Government teachers have been trained on the Udaan approach. This scale-up has helped change the future trajectory of thousands of girls, says Feagans.

Having been through the program, Laxmi now dreams of becoming a teacher. “If I didn’t go to Udaan, I would have been cleaning houses with my mom and soon married off,” she says. “Being at Udaan allowed me to dream about my future for the first time.”

 

07.06.16
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The App Helping Africa’s Midwives Save Lives

This article first appeared on the Women & Girls Hub from News Deeply

A mobile health project in Ethiopia gives any health worker with a smartphone access to the information they need to deal with emergencies during childbirth. Now it’s being scaled up to reach 10,000 health workers across Africa and Southeast Asia by 2017.

A midwife at Gimbi Health Center in West Wellega, Ethiopia, uses the Safe Delivery App to help her carry out an examination on a patient. Photo by Mulugeta Wolde

For Ethiopian mother Mitike Birhanu, the birth of her twins almost ended in tragedy. She was unconscious when the second of her babies was delivered, and the newborn seemed lifeless. But her midwife quickly consulted an app on her smartphone, diagnosed the problems, and used emergency procedures to save both Mitike’s life and that of her child.

Every year, over 300,000 women globally die from pregnancy-related causes, and over 5 million babies die during birth or within the first weeks of their lives. Yet the vast majority of maternal and newborn deaths could be prevented if health workers attending births had better emergency skills and knowledge.

Many health workers in low- or middle-income countries work in environments where there is no electricity or running water. But one thing they do have is smartphones.

The Safe Delivery App (SDA) was created as a simple tool for health workers such as midwives and nurses to access basic emergency obstetric and neonatal care skills. Developed by Danish NGO Maternity Foundation in collaboration with the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Copenhagen, the app aims to train and instruct birth attendants on how to manage potentially fatal complications during pregnancy and childbirth.

Based on global clinical guidelines, the SDA contains four basic features: animated instruction videos, action cards, a drug list and practical procedure instructions. The five- to seven-minute videos teach lifesaving skills such as how to stop a woman bleeding after birth or how to resuscitate a newborn. When there is no time to watch the full video, the action cards give clear, essential recommendations and immediate care information – such as how to mix an alcohol-based hand rub.

The SDA is free to download from Google Play and the App Store. And it can be preinstalled on phones, so once it’s downloaded, users don’t need a network connection or internet access to view the videos or other features.

Meaza Semaw, project coordinator at the Ethiopian Midwives Association, says the app is ideal for places like Ethiopia, where women’s access to quality maternal health services is challenging, especially if they experience complications in birth. “The Safe Delivery App is a great tool to improve maternal health in Ethiopia. Most midwives, if not all, have a mobile phone, so accessibility is very high,” she says. “The app is easy to use because it is supported by animations and videos. In addition, it uses local languages.”

With the support of the MSD for Mothers program, the first four of the app’s 10 videos were tested in a one-year, randomized controlled trial across 78 facilities in Ethiopia during 2014. Results show users’ skills in handling most common complications such as postpartum hemorrhage and newborn resuscitation more than doubled after 12 months of using the app.

The app was officially launched in April 2015, and a year later was chosen by the Women Deliver conference as an example of how a partnership-based innovation can help end maternal and newborn mortality. SDA is now currently in use in Kenya, with plans to roll out to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Laos and India in the coming months.

So far, the app has been funded with help from over $50,000 in donations through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, and Maternity Foundation is working with partners in individual countries to fund the translation and rollout of the app. The hope is to be able to fulfill the commitment Maternity Foundation made to the U.N.’s Every Woman Every Child to reach 10,000 health workers with the app by the end of 2017, so ensuring a safer birth for 1 million women.

At Wollega University in Ethiopia, student midwives use the app during training. (Mulugeta Wolde)At Wollega University in Ethiopia, student midwives use the app during training. (Mulugeta Wolde)

Maternity Foundation CEO Anna Frellsen says the organization is working in partnership with governments, midwives’ associations and larger NGOs to achieve its goal. “We really want to see the app integrated as part of the existing health system in countries, and we are starting to engage with the [health] ministries and stakeholders in each country to find out how it can be used and adapted,” she says.

The Ethiopian Midwives Association is currently working on integrating the SDA into its ongoing training program. Frellsen hopes other health organizations in participating countries will do likewise.

There is also a new version of the app in the works, which will feature quizzes and a test (rewarded by a certificate) to “push” learning to the user and make the experience more interactive.

Frellsen says one of the key components of Maternity Foundation’s “backbone” support for its partners will be disseminating learning around the SDA and mobile health in general. “We are looking at how we can publish some of the learning for sharing with others who would like to use the app, but also more broadly as a case for how to scale up an mHealth [mobile health] tool,” she says.

In western Ethiopia’s Gimbi rural district, the midwife who saved Mitike’s life says the Safe Delivery App has already made her better at her job. “I am confident that from what I have learned from the app, I can stop [a mother] bleeding,” says Yane Ababaw. “I can save her life.”

07.01.16
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A Future in Code: Building Life Skills in Syria

This article first appeared on the Women & Girls Hub from News Deeply

Motivated by a desire to rebuild Syria’s devastated economy, enterprising young women in the war-torn country are turning to tech to help others of their generation find employment – and better futures.

Leen Darwish, right, developed her Arabic-language platform Remmaz to address the gap in non-English-language programming resources that are available to Arab communities. Photo by UNFPA Syria/Ghassan Ahmad

 

For the past five years, 22-year-old Syrian student Leen Darwish has seen her country ruined by bombings, battles and one of the biggest population displacements in modern history. But determined to help rebuild the nation’s economy for her fellow young people, Darwish – a computer science undergraduate at the University of Damascus – has launched an award-winning, Arabic-language app to help young people in Syria, and beyond, learn to code.

Just six months since its launch, Darwish’s Remmaz app already has over 5,000 active users learning to code, design websites and develop apps (application programs) on the platform she and her business partner started developing while they were second-year university students. Their aim is to create an accessible, Arabic online learning MOOC (massive open online course) to address the lack of non-English programming resources available to Arab communities, particularly young people looking for employment in conflict-scarred Syria.

Darwish and her team are in the process of crunching the data to find out more about Remmaz’s users. However, they already know that most are based in Morocco and aged between 20 and 23 – university-age students looking for work opportunities, she suggests.

“Remmaz is a startup whose mission is to make an evolution in online learning about programming in the Arab world, to empower people to learn about cutting-edge technology tools through Arabic content, in an easy and accessible way, to let them be qualified for a job opportunity in one of the highest-paid jobs – programming,” says Darwish.

The conflict in Syria has created 5 million refugees and internally displaced a further 13.5 million residents – a total of 18.5 million people forced from their homes in a country that, before the conflict began, had a population of 23 million. Secondary education has dropped by 44 percent, causing an estimated economic loss of over $10 billion – equivalent to nearly 18 percent of the national GDP.

Darwish launched Remmaz after attending a three-week training course in December 2015, supported by the UNFPA’s Innovation Fund, on how to start and manage a small business. She initially heard about the course through her startup incubator. Having developed her idea, she was keen to gain some commercial skills and make contacts.

“I began my startup when I was in the second year of university, so I lacked business knowledge and entrepreneurship culture,” she says, speaking from her adopted city of Damascus; she left her home town of Harasta when the conflict made it untenable for her family to remain there. “This program was a great opportunity, as the mentors and trainers have 20 years of real experience in this field, which was really important for me.”

People taking part in the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) program, run in partnership with local NGOs, ranged from 22 to 30 years of age and came from different ethnic groups and regions. Like Darwish, they had been displaced by the conflict in Syria. Nearly 200 people applied for 28 places; 20 of the 28 were women.

Through lectures, workshops and mentoring, participants were supported as they worked to fine-tune their plans and develop their tech-based small businesses. Delivered by enterprise experts, the training covered marketing, accounting, business planning, communications and leadership skills.

At the end of the course, 17 projects were chosen for further UNFPA support. Along with Remmaz, they included computer maintenance, after-school programs and online computer games. More recently, Remmaz won an entrepreneurship competition for Syrian startups, taking a $15,000 prize that will go towards expanding the app, says Darwish.

Bruce Campbell, UNFPA global coordinator for the organization’s Data for Development platform, says the program helps “to improve the resilience of Syrian young people by supporting them with critical life skills and strengthening their ability to cope with difficult circumstances.”

But he acknowledges that the program has had its challenges, from the high volume of applicants to the limited ability to travel throughout the country, making it difficult to expand the project.

Of the 28 students on the UNFPA's startup training course, 20 were women. (UNFPA Syria)Of the 28 students on the UNFPA’s startup training course, 20 were women. (UNFPA Syria/Ghassan Ahmad)

Based on the innovation program’s success in Damascus, UNFPA has since rolled out the training to two more Syrian governorates, Homs and Tartous. Campbell hopes it will continue to scale up in Syria, with the ambition of rolling out the program over two years.

“The program encourages young people to submit projects jointly, supporting them to become comfortable working together across ethnic divisions,” he says. “For example, it would not be uncommon to see young people from Aleppo sending textiles to youth in Tartous, and young people from Tartous sending IT equipment to counterparts in Aleppo.”

After graduation this summer, Darwish plans to take a master’s degree in artificial intelligence and organize “hackathons” in collaboration with UNFPA and Damascus Girl Geeks. But she remains focused on her vision for Syria. “Big businesses are closing and the problems we are facing only young people can solve,” she says. “The need for startups and entrepreneurship culture is really essential for Syria.”

06.02.16
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After the Nepal Earthquake, Weaving Brings Wealth

One year on from a devastating earthquake, a group of young Nepalese women are using an age-old craft as a new way to support their families and boost the local economy.

Ramita Gole (left) and Nirmala Lungeli Magar from the Panchakanya group. Photo by UNDP/Rapid Enterprise and Livelihood Recovery Project (RELRP)

 

Belimaya Ginel Magar and a handful of other young women from the village of Kapilakot in southeastern Nepal had just finished a training course in traditional Dhaka cloth weaving when the worst earthquake in the country’s recent history struck on April 25, 2015.

The 7.8-magnitude quake flattened the women’s village. But Belimaya and her fellow weavers refused to let the disaster quash their dreams of using their new skills to earn a living. One year on, their Panchakanya Micro Entrepreneurs Group is among the hundreds of new and thriving small businesses helping to regenerate Nepal’s economy.

Last year’s earthquake and subsequent aftershocks in central Nepal left around 9,000 people dead, more than 22,000 injured and millions homeless. There was significant damage to small enterprises and markets – up to 90 percent in the most affected areas, with small farms, artisanal products and tourism services among the worst hit.

Belimaya and her coworkers from the Dhamile Village Development Committee (VDC) of Sindhuli District are among the more than 80 percent of Nepal’s population living in rural areas. Income-earning opportunities are scarce, which has resulted in a huge exodus of the productive workforce – predominantly young men – to India, the Gulf states and beyond. Women (along with children and older people) remain in the villages and are responsible for taking care of their families.

Belimaya, 26, cares for her two elementary-school-age children while her husband works in Qatar. Before the earthquake, she was excited to hear about the chance to learn a new income-earning skill through the Micro-Enterprise Development Programme(MEDEP) – a scheme set up in 1998 by the government of Nepal and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and currently funded by the Australian government to encourage employment opportunities.

“One year back, we did not have any skills to make money. We had plenty of leisure time after sending the kids to school,” Belimaya said. “The training to make Dhaka clothes came as an opportunity to start a business. The training boosted our confidence to set up the microenterprise. We believed that this business would change our life.”

For centuries, Nepal’s craftspeople have woven the pure cotton cloth known as Dhaka. Still produced by hand loom with traditional designs, modern Dhaka is used to create everything from saris and shirts to bed sheets and table mats. This unique weaving style is one of Nepal’s most recognizable and commercially popular handicrafts.

Belimaya was among a group of 10 women to embark on a three-month weaving training course run by MEDEP in 2015, beginning just before the earthquake and ending when the frequent aftershocks subsided.

When the earthquake struck, she and four fellow trainees were in the process of setting up a weaving workshop. “The quake fully damaged our bamboo-made cottage [workshop],” said Belimaya, now chair of the Panchakanya group. “A few weeks after the earthquake, we rebuilt a makeshift [one].”

But as their homes were far from the workshop, Belimaya and her colleagues were spending an entire day traveling to their new workplace. “So we decided to rent around Kapilakot,” she said. “We had to leave home and shift to a new place, along with children. But we were determined to do this.”

And that was not the only challenge that these women faced. “Disbelief upon our initiative… was most discouraging for us,” said Belimaya, referring to the reaction from local people to the group’s devotion to building the workshop and starting a business.

 

Weavers had to build a bamboo house to create a workshop in their village. (UNDP Nepal)Weavers had to build a bamboo house to create a workshop in their village. (UNDP Nepal)

When villagers saw these women – most of whom were under 25 at the time – cutting and laying bamboo, digging small holes and fixing sticks, they presumed that they were building homes for earthquake victims or constructing poultry farms.

“Initially, nobody believed in us. Many men assumed that we girls would not be able to build a cottage by ourselves. They said we were wasting our time. But we showed them,” said Suntali Maya Ghalan, another member of the Panchakanya group.

The women began building their bamboo cottage in October 2015. Within a week, they had built a modest cottage with a tarpaulin roof, at a cost of 1,500 Nepalese rupees ($14) funded by the VDC office and a local cooperative. This inspired three more women to join the group, bringing the total to eight members.

Through the Rapid Enterprise and Livelihoods Recovery Project(RELRP), another UNDP-administered scheme funded by the Australian government and launched in June 2015, the Panchakanya group received a week-long Dhaka weaving refresher course. Three members visited Tanahun District in central Nepal for an additional three-month advanced weaving course, funded in part by the Nepal government’s program for small business regeneration.

The group funded and set up seven manual weaving machines before formally launching their enterprise in October 2015. Their products – sold at local markets – include kurtas (traditional loose shirts), handkerchiefs, coverlets, hats, shawls, blouses and ties. Members invest their profits to scale up their business and have started a monthly savings program with a local cooperative.

Belimaya is delighted with Panchakanya’s success, which has seen the group grow to 25 active members who each receive an income of around $90 to $140 per month from sales of their Dhaka products.

“The amount covers most of the expenses of our daily life. We pay rent, fulfill daily needs and pay our children’s school fees as well,” said Belimaya, adding that the enterprise has earned members respect from their husbands and other family members.

“These women have shown such promise within such a short time,” said Indra Hyau, district coordinator of RELRP in Sindhuli. “RELRP is currently supporting the construction of a common facility center for them to work in a safer environment. We are very impressed with their dedication.”

Over 8,000 women have been able to restart their businesses through the support of UNDP/RELRP and 1,400 new women entrepreneurs have been created, earning as much as $90 per month.

With Nepal’s youth unemployment at an all-time high, self-sufficient entrepreneurs such as the Panchakanya members are role models for others in their village.

“Those who were discouraging us in the beginning were curious to send their daughters to our enterprise for learning. Now, the villagers extend support towards us and treat us with respect. We hope that more women will join us and more women will be empowered in the remote villages,” Belimaya said.

“Today, we don’t have to wait for our husbands to send money from the Gulf countries. We are able to manage on our own.”