Reuters AlertNet Full site
Homepage | Newsdesk | NGO Latest | Crisis briefings | Country profiles | MediaWatch | Jobs | Alerting | Login

FROM THE FIELD

Hundreds of women lead Haitian community co-ops to food, economic security
11 Mar 2009 14:16:00 GMT
 Source: Church World Service-USA
Website: Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org

284081 logo
Co-op member Elizia Saintelus.
Previous | Next
Co-op member Elizia Saintelus.
Photo: Hillary Prag for CWS

Background

•  Food and hunger

•  Haiti troubles

MORE >>
Friday, March 6, 2009

As the world celebrates International Women's Day (March 8), global humanitarian agency Church World Service is paying tribute to women worldwide and to one group of women in particular who are successfully tacking local food insecurity and poverty in Haiti, a nation plagued by ongoing political instability, the worst poverty in the western hemisphere, economic insecurity, and rising prices that led to food riots last year.

As the world celebrates International Women's Day (March 8), global humanitarian agency Church World Service is paying tribute to women worldwide and to one group of women in particular who are successfully tackling local food insecurity and poverty in Haiti, a nation plagued by ongoing political instability, the worst poverty in the western hemisphere, economic insecurity, and rising prices that led to food riots last year.

For Church World Service, empowering women is as much an objective as it is an international development mantra.

In Haiti's Nord-Oueste (Northwest) and Artibonite regions hundreds of women from 14 extremely poor communities are part of a network of rural cooperatives that are working together to create economic security and sustainable food sources for their families. The effort is supported by Church World Service and operated by CWS Haitian partner Christian Center for Integrated Development (Sant Kretyen Pou Developman Entegre-SKDE).

Despite some losses experienced in last year's brutal hurricane damage across Haiti, these farming cooperatives are steadily producing and flourishing.

The cooperatives are made up of neighbors who pool their resources in a community "bank" through which members save, borrow, store grain, share land and animals, learn to manage their land and money—and repay their micro-loans.

Together, on land they own or share with others in the co-op, members grow some, eat some, and sell some.

The co-op communities have progressed from individual income generating ventures at which some people barely made enough to send their children to school, to places where people can get co-op loans to expand homegrown businesses to the point that they generate adequate income to maintain households.

With the combined support of Church World Service, SKDE and the Foods Resource Bank, 14 such cooperatives are thriving in rural Haiti.

There are some men in the cooperatives but it is the women--traditionally undervalued, undereducated, and underemployed--who are serving as significant contributors to and benefactors of these community development initiatives.

Cooperative member Elizia Saintelus' story is typical of the experience of women who have become part of the community development project:

"I sell salt. I used to sell from a little basket I carried on my head, so I didn't make much. I borrowed 1,500 goudes ($38 US) from the cooperative, and together with money I inherited from some land, I was able to buy a donkey. With the donkey I was able to increase my commerce. I have six children, and before only four were in school, but with the increased commerce I was able to put all six in school."

Her participation in the cooperative improved the possibilities for Saintelus' family, but it did not shield her from a natural disaster that could have plunged them back into intractable poverty. Their donkey perished in a storm, Saintelus told Hillary Prag, who interviewed women of the cooperatives for Church World Service.

"So now, two of my children can't go to school again. I'll buy another donkey when I can, but it's hard. The cooperative can't lend more than 1,500 goudes, which isn't enough to buy a donkey. If we had more money to make bigger loans it would be better."

Their co-op will have more money as members earn enough to increase their contributions, thereby increasing the amount of money available for lending to each other.

That Saintelus has to wait for another loan from her co-op is a significant shift away from a humanitarian model in which she might simply be given another donkey and, unintentionally, be taught dependency rather than self-reliance.

Instead, she and the other co-op members will continue contributing money, animals, grains and other resources, as they are able. They'll keep on learning to manage their land and the money they earn from trade. They'll continue applying what they learn and then training people in other communities to form their own co-ops.

Most important, though, the women of these cooperatives will continue to build their communities and empower themselves, in their own time, in their own way, until eventually they will be able to sustain themselves, without perpetual assistance from outsiders.

How to Help: Contributions to support this CWS work can be made online, by calling 800-297-1516, or by mail to Church World Service, 28606 Phillips Street, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515.

Media Contacts: Lesley Crosson, 212-870-2676 lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 24/7, 781-925-1526 jdragin@gis.net


[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

Email this article       Send comments

Topics

•  Food and hunger

•  Women

•  Working in Relief

MORE >>

Emergencies

•  Haiti troubles

MORE >>

Members

•  Church World Service-USA

MORE >>

NGO latest

•  Hundreds of women lead Haitian community co-ops to food, economic security
CWS

•  Put hunger high on political agenda: Shabana Azmi
ActionAid - India

•  UMCOR Hotline for March 10, 2009
UMCOR - USA

•  Giant Climate Bill for Denmark
DanChurchAid - Denmark

•  Romanian children celebrate their mothers on International Women’s Day
World Vision MEERO - Cyprus

MORE >>

Latest news

•  U.S. FDA approves new, cheaper female condom

•  U.N. says paralysed in Sudan without aid partners

•  Ban, Bill Clinton urge economic changes for Haiti

•  MADAGASCAR: Army threatens to intervene

•  INTERVIEW-WFP plans global fund to pre-buy food stocks

MORE >>

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

Background information

Briefings
Haiti troubles - [Who works where]

Topics
Food and hunger Women Working in Relief
Facts & figures
Haiti
Statistics graphs
Human development index ranking (2005)
Chart for Human development index ranking
View more stats

Related articles

Breaking stories
 U.S. FDA approves new, cheaper female condom (1 minute ago)

U.N. says paralysed in Sudan without aid partners (1 minute ago)

AlertNet insight
 Rising mobile phone use rings change in disasters (1 minute ago)

Aid agency news feed
 Hundreds of women lead Haitian community co-ops to food, economic security (1 minute ago)

Blogs
 Back in the bush (1 minute ago)

Maps
 MAP: Somalia food security outlook (Jan-June 2009) (1 minute ago)


Del.icio.us Del.icio.us  |   Digg Digg  |   NewsVine NewsVine  |   Reddit Reddit   
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-03-10T234840Z_01_GTM03_RTRIDSP_2_GUATEMALA_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/GTM03.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-03-10T153609Z_01_SAN11_RTRIDSP_2_YEMEN_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/SAN11.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-03-10T115151Z_01_SAN06_RTRIDSP_2_YEMEN_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/SAN06.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-03-10T115134Z_01_SAN07_RTRIDSP_2_YEMEN_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/SAN07.htm
Thumb for /thefacts/imagerepository/RTRPICT/2009-03-08T145853Z_01_FED05_RTRIDSP_2_POLAND_mainimage.jpg|/thenews/pictures/FED05.htm

A young boy watches as police and firemen work at the crime scene where the dismembered body of a woman was found in Guatemala City March 10, 2009. Officials reported a ...


More pictures | Galleries
Disclaimers |  Copyright |  Privacy |  Contact Us |  Feedback |  About Us |  RSS XML

Last updated:Wed Mar 11 14:21:49 2009