NAME OF PROJECT SUBMITTED: ECONOMICALLY EMPOWERING NEGLECTED RURAL WOMEN FOR RESILIENCE TO BETTER ATTAIN GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THUS ACHIEVE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOAL THREE
PROJECT CONTACT PERSON:
MR. SSERUKEERA THADDEUS – PROJECT MANAGER/RESOURCE MOBILIZER
MS. TUSASIRWE ADAH – FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION MANAGER
EMAIL CONTACT:
TELEPHONE NUMBER: +256701574415/+256776574415
ORGANIZATION LOCATION: NANZIGA – NSANGI SUB-COUNTY
WAKISO DISTRICT – UGANDA EAST AFRICA
PROJECT DURATION: 2014 & 2015
SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR THE PROJECT:
GLOBAL GIVING DONORS ------$14,000
INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION ------$ 3200
BOARD MEMBERS CONTRIBUTION------$ 2000
COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION------$1500
SELF GENERATED (ORGN) ------$ 3000
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP FEES------$ 900
Charity Walks ------$ 500
THE PROPOSED PROJECT
Rural Women Empowerment Initiative is requesting for financial support from Global Giving to support the economic empowerment of rural women through modernizing agricultural practices to enhance their ability to attain Millennium Development Goal Three and other MDGs. Rural Women Empowerment Initiative in the next five year strategic plan period has prioritized: Building capacity of rural women in Modern piggery practices to to expand this widely practiced initiative so as to yield huge financial benefits for the disadvantaged rural women.
The program includes: Training 120 women in their respective groups of 50 each in piggery management (Feeding, health care, housing and breeding/stock multiplication). The project also intends to purchase hybrid piglets which will be kept in the already acquired piggery demonstration center and a pass on system will be used, where the original stock will be used for multiplication of offsprings to give out to other two (2) women group. The project will also cater for veterinary services to ensure health animals are produced to meet the market demand.
Rural Women will also be trained in crop growing /food production to produce enough food for home consumption and to sell the surplus to cater for the basic needs such as affording essential medicines, school fees for children. Crop production such as maize produces animal and poultry feeds as maize is eaten by both pigs and poultry birds. The women will be sensitized on the kind of seeds to grow, timing/season for growing, water harvesting, and planting of seeds in rows for better spacing. Under this initiative financial support has been requested purchase 500 Kilograms of Maize and 500 Kilograms of maize, natural liquid fertilizers and pesticides will also be purchase to be sprayed on maize and bean plants for better yields.
Support modernization of traditional poultry practices for better poultry yields. According to visits conducted in all households of women members, 90% of these members practice piggery alongside poultry practice. It was therefore right and fitting to support women to modernize the poultry practice to diversity income and sources of cheap proteins for their families as well as farm yard manure. For 2013 and 2014, Rural Women empowerment initiative intends to purchase poultry feeds, drinkers and feeders, support incubation services to have more poultry chicks produced for as many women to access as possible.
Health awareness raising trainings will continue to be carried out. The Organization realizes the women members and other community women need to be sensitized continuously for purposes of ensuring proper health. Alot of ignorance about health seeking behaviors is still witnessed among the rural community with hygiene and sanitation indicators at household level being low. 5 women and 5 men will be train as community health educators to disseminate messages on health promotion such as keeping houses and toilets clean, using mosquito treated nets, embracing couple counseling and testing of HIV/AIDS, early diagnosis of common cervical and cancer and basic primary health care. The peer educators will also transmit information on referral pathways to enable rural women access services.
Lack of business planning skills is a common phenomenon among rural women members. To address the knowledge and skill gaps, women will be equipped with business knowledge and skills in areas of: group up and contributing capital to start income generating businesses, record keeping, marketing, saving and means of accessing credit. Women will need to entrepreneurship skills to expand on their profit margins as they will be empowered by the project to expand piggery and poultry stock.
Establishment of market for the agricultural products is very important for rural women, much as rural women as motivated to do farming, their products are normally bought at a much less price thus causing losses and frustration to the rural women. Once funding is acquired for this project, the project manager will endeavor to link rural women to potential buyers such as pock slaughtering houses in Kampala, Poultry consumers – restaurants. Marketing fliers will be printed and distributed as an innovation to communicate products.
What is the issue, problem, or challenge?
Overall the economic conditions of rural women members United under Rural Women Empowerment Initiative are poor with 85% of rural women earning less than one US Dollar a day, extreme poverty is worsened by poor health conditions of households women at household level, malaria prevalence is high and ignorance about preventive measures of communicable diseases. Villages are remote/rural and isolated and thus neglected by mainstream development interventions. Generally households practice poor ad risky hygiene behavior, malnutrition at household level due to subsistence methods of production leading to low crop yields. Despite the interest and wide practice of piggery farming in this rural community, women still earn less due to application of primitive methods of piggery production (local breeds, thin and vulnerable to diseases). In summary extreme ignorance about modern/commercialized agricultural practices, extreme poverty and neglect have perpetuated undesirable conditions of living among rural women. Poor health worsens the situation by wiping away precious lives of productive women. Unless root causes of these problems are addressed through meaningful engagement of rural women in skills development and provision of animal stock and crop stock, women will still live below the poverty line which affects their life span and causes perpetuation of gender inequalities between rural and urban women.
How will this project solve this problem?
Rural Women through a needs assessment and solution seeking meeting voiced out possible solutions to their problems and their suggestions influenced the design of this project.
Rural women noted that they are predominantly involved in agricultural practices specializing in traditional piggery and poultry farming. In line with this view, the project intends to equip the rural women members in three groups with modern skills in piggery and poultry practice. The project also intends to purchase and provide animal stock and feeds in kind to the trained women to practice to farming skills acquired. Regarding food security at household’s level, the three groups of women will be equipped with modern skills in crop production to produce food for consumption and sell the surplus for income.
Marketing is an important element when it comes to rural women and agriculture. The project intends to reach potential buyers of piggery products (Pork slaughtering houses) and chicken buyers. Maize produced will mainly cater for ongoing need for animal and poultry feeds. Farmers will also be free to sell surplus beans to the market since these have ready market, but selling of food crops will take place after seeds have been passed on to other groups of women.
Health awareness raising will also be done to promote safer health practices. The project intends to train the three women groups so that they pass on the health messages to the respective communities in which they leave. Five (5) women and five (5) men health peer educators will be trained to pass on health messages to community members on monthly basis during worship days such as Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and during quarterly village meetings. A medical practitioner will be hired to sensitize women members on proper household sanitation and hygiene, sanitation, first aid tips, prevention of malaria, diarrhea and water borne diseases like Bilhazia, breast cancer screening at households level, HIV/AIDS prevention and couple counseling and testing, family planning to produce children by choice not by change. Localized Health messages will be printed in local languages (1500 fliers) and distributed to the community households to serve as key reminders. Once funds permit we shall also distribute first aid kits to 150 women households.
(SEE PROBLEM TREEE ANALYSIS DIAGRAM ON NEXT PAGE TO ILLUSTRATE CAUSE AND EFFECT RELATIONSHIP)
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2.4. PROBLEM TREE ANALYSIS DIAGRAM DEPICTING PROBLEM – EFFECT RELATIONSHIP
Effects
Core Problems
Root Causes
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2.5. PROJECT BENEFICIARIES AND HOW WILL THEY BENEFIT FROM THIS EMPOWERMENT PROJECT
No. / Category of project Beneficiary / Particular beneficiaries / Kind of benefit from the project1. / ●Primary beneficiaries of the project: These will be direct beneficiaries / ●150 identified and registered economically disadvantaged women / ●150 poor rural women will become knowledgeable and skilled in modern piggery practice (These will be trained in their respective four groups). The Rural women will become agriculture entrepreneurs, good small business planners since this is part and partial of their training package. ●In their respective groups, the first two trained women groups will receive thirty (40) hybrid piglets each and after a period of nine months other two women groups will in a similar way receive thirty (40) piglets from the first two groups of beneficiaries through send a pig program. ●The rural women will become full time piggery farmers thus gainfully employed into this practice ●The first two groups (100 women) will each receive 150 bags of mixed piggery feeds to address the need for piggery feeds; they will receive 5 dozens of vaccines, 4 packets of deworming medicine. After 12 months the same will be passed on to the other two groups of women. ●Each of the two groups will receive 500 Kilograms of maize so as to plant and maximize yields to meet the ongoing needs for piggery feeds. ●The women will increase on their agriculture production through using animal waste (farm yard manure) to fertilize the soils for abundant harvest. Women have observed for a long time that those pigs dropping (manure) acts faster on crops than any other manure. So the more pigs the more the farmyard manure which fertilizes bigger crop field. ●Awareness of the four (4) women groups about primary health issues including rural sanitation and hygiene, early testing, diagnosis, behavior change, prevention and management of HIV/AIDS as well as breast and cervical cancer will be raised ●Members or Rural Women Empowerment Initiative will benefit by attaining access to credit since they will be saving proceeds from sale of mature pigs on the organizational bank account during project implementation. In addition women will appreciate the advantages of saving ●The four participating women groups will at least be able to earn a minimum of 100 USD per month after the project period of twenty (24) months of active piggery practice.
2. / Secondary beneficiaries: This will be indirect beneficiaries from the project / •Spouses and children to the rural women beneficiaries
•Relatives and family members to the women beneficiaries / ●Relatives and family members will learn from the trained and empowered women and also get involved in commercialized piggery thus increase animal stock and consequently household income.
●Due to income security that will accrue from the project, the women will be able to afford meeting the costs of scholastic materials for their school going children, avail family with a balanced diet, meet cots of basic essential household materials.
3. / Other Beneficiaries / •Suppliers of hybrid piglets improved maize seeds suppliers, vet-pharmaceuticals that is suppliers of vaccinations and deworming.
•The wider community including villages from Nanziga, Maya, Negambidde.
•Service providers such as facilitators like: small scale business trainers, health awareness trainers, agricultural extension instructor, project staff.
●The Bank, Centenary Rural Development / ●The suppliers to this project will gain in terms of having potential buyers for their product. There will be a continuous supplier – client relationship since the project practices are to be sustained.
●Once women participate in this empowerment project, the income and skills will trickle down to the community members. (They will train disseminate the same skills and animals to the community members
•These will benefit by being paid for their services rendered towards the empowerment project.
●Bank will benefit by charging user friendly bank charges on the project savings once members begin saving.
Potential Long Term Impact
Economic empowerment of rural women as suggested by women beneficiaries themselves is a sustainable initiative. This is because women utilize their own resources and environment to modernize the agriculture practices which they are already practicing, by design the rural women do have ownership and active participation in the empowerment project, they participate in acquisition of modern agricultural skills and once they receive animal stock when funds are obtained they practice skills acquired and earn income which motivates them to expand on piggery and modernized poultry practices.
Production of maize will not only cater for feeding at household level but maize production is to cater for the ongoing need for both piggery and poultry feeds since pigs and poultry birds all feed on maize. Therefore animal feeds requested for in the budget will only serve for a limited purposes and continuity of piggery practice will be supported by the maize produced by women members.
Being an economically empowerment and skills development training, the project will leave women knowledgeable about starting small scale projects, they will also be able to save proceeds once they practice piggery and poultry practices, savings will enable the rural women expand modern piggery and poultry practices thus continue earning increasing income. Through grouping up, the women will also continuously share experiences, pratical skills and successes which are to be emulated by fellow women members. The approach to be used will be learning by doing approach.
The project will also promote women’s involvement in health seeking behaviours, women members will be sensitized on the health behaviors mentioned above, they will be expected to transmit the same messages to their family members and neighbours. The peer educators trained will also disseminate health messages to believers during religious and village gatherings, by the end of 2014, the project will have reached 5000 community people with health messages and 2500 households with printed messages. The health awareness initiative is intended to change the unsafe health practices thus reduce prevalence of preventable diseases.