Posts Tagged ‘catalyst grants’
IDEX Program Officers, Kat and Vini are on field visits in South Africa to research groups IDEX could support through our catalyst grants program.
Abalimi Bezekhaya is just 30 minutes outside of the center of Cape Town. Abalimi Bezekhaya, is working to improve sustainable food production and environmental greening in the townships of Cape Town. Their focus is to provide skills development through training and support people and organizations that wish to practice organic horticulture and micro farming. Abalimi Bezekhaya means “the farmers of home” in Xhosa.
We visited a community garden managed by mainly elderly women, who are members of VUFA – a black women-led urban farmers association in South Africa called Vukuzenzela Urban Farmers Association. On 5,000 hectares of land, 5 elderly women and 1 man are running this community garden. The vegetables are not just for their own consumption, but also to bring in an income when sold at market.
Since beginning to grow their own vegetables the women have seen incredible health benefits. Most importantly, they have been in such good help they haven’t had any need to see a doctor.
VUFA has implemented a challenging recruitment process. To demonstrate their commitment to the group women must volunteer with the group for one year, before being asked to join. Many of these elderly women have a lot of time on their hands and enjoy fully being in the garden. But it’s been harder to capture the attention of young people.
At the Abalimi office, we met Christina Kaba, the chair of VUFA. Christina came to Cape Town from Mpumalanga and started working with Abalimi in 1989. Christina became a strong promoter of women growing their own home gardens (tree nurseries) in the townships. It is her goal that VUFA can provide a platform for a unified voice to be showcased at the government level to represent all urban women farmers.
Christina invited Vini and me to visit Khayelitsha, a township about an hour away from Cape Town. Here, the community groups are not only developing gardens, but many of the women are initiating for sewing projects or running a soup kitchen together. Abalimi has played a key role in supporting VUFA with marketing their vegetables, but VUFA members now want to be trained in management and bookkeeping skills so they can learn to stand up for themselves and run VUFA by themselves.
We visit the community garden that Christina started long ago in Khayelitsha. It is close to where she lives, and now has 10 women taking care of it. On one side is the garden they grow vegetables for market as a group, and on the other, each woman has their own small plot of land to grow food for self-consumption and to sell to people in the township.
Christina introduced Nokwanda to us. She had trained Nokwanda in how to run a community garden, in turn another 8 women have bee trained to grow vegetables. Even more, Nokwanda invites other people in the township a 4-day training workshop so the participants can start a garden at their homes. The group will follow-up with them for the next two years.
VUFA is very community minded and works in a number of ways to share their garden and vegetables. Children in primary school are taught about growing vegetables and where their food comes from. Young people in tertiary education are encourage to do internships at the garden. VUFA also gives away a portion of their vegetables to disability and HIV programs plus they have plans to start a hospital gardens.
The women were kind enough to have cooked a fresh traditional dish made from the vegetables of the garden pronounced “imifino” a mixed of spinach, cabbage, green peppers and green onions. It was both delicious and left me a wonderful feeling to know where my food came from, and that it was fresh from the earth and not been processed in any way.
IDEX Program Officers, Kat and Vini are on field visits in South Africa to research groups IDEX could support through our catalyst grants program.
Today we traveled one hour north of Cape Town towards Paarl, an area surrounded by mountains and vineyards, on the banks of the Berg River. We visited one of REACH’s awareness workshops on sexual harassment with an objective of encouraging women to participate in sharing their life stories to create a book in time for Rural Women’s Day on August 15, 2009.
REACH stands for Rural Education, Awareness and Community Health, an organization that addresses sexual harassment and sexual violence, and its interlinking factors on farms and in farming communities in the Western Cape. Joanie Fredericks and Claudia Lopes founded REACH. It is a response to the high prevalence of violence against women, alcohol and drug abuse, and HIV/AIDS in the Southern Western Cape’s rural communities which lack programs and support services to address and assist those whose lives are affected by these social responses.
Thanks to research conducted by REACH on sexual harassment in rural areas we’re able to know the following.
1. South Africa has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.
2. Women are murdered, raped, physically assaulted, threatened, harassed and abused every single day.
3. Rural farm worker communities in the Western Cape are a vulnerable group: low wages, job insecurity, cramped and poor housing conditions, isolation, illiteracy and limited access to police, health and legal services all play a role to create this vulnerable environment.
We arrived at a cute daycare center. Children came running to hug us hello. The center shares their space with REACH so they can conduct their workshop there today. This center is in the middle of a beautiful landscape, where you can see endless green and the air is fresh. The staff of REACH worked to quickly to set up the center with posters and banners. 35 women farm workers eventually arrived enthusiastically greeting everyone at REACH.
The workshop was conducted in Afrikaans. Claudia translated the workshop for us in English. Joanie is the facilitator of the workshop today. She enjoys being a trainer and you can enjoy her charismatic presentation without knowing what she’s saying. The women clearly have great trust in her and REACH. The women started the workshop by sharing why they like coming to REACH’s workshop. One woman said “every time I come to REACH’s workshops I learn something new about women’s rights and I always go back and share it with other people who are not able to come.”
Since 2006, REACH has organized a campaign each year for Rural Women’s Day. This provides a platform for rural women to use their voice to highlight issues that affect them. The community members always decide what key issue will be highlighted. Last year it was community violence after a six-year old was kidnapped, raped and strangled by a neighbor. Women were shocked and used the event to share their feelings and concerns about community violence. This year the main issues will be alcohol and drug abuse.
In spite of the language barrier, it was evident that a comfortable space had been created. Towards the end of the workshop several women spoke about their story of abuse by a husband, boyfriend or community member and not having anyone to turn to. When REACH appeared in their lives, it gave them awareness to know that their rights had been violated and they could say “no more.”
This is how REACH has been so instrumental, by providing this much-needed support system. Now women who have faced sexual and domestic violence can contact REACH and know thy can access assistance, whether it is legal support, counseling or health. Many of the women at the workshop were first-time attendees. REACH’s work has hardly begun and the need is great.
Gladys and Lupita of CIAM
On the outskirts of San Cristóbal lies the office of El Centro de Investigación y Acción de la Mujer Latinoamericana (Latin American Women’s Center for Research and Action, or CIAM), one of IDEX’s catalyst grantees. Even the taxi had a difficult time to find this place but once I arrived, I found myself in a beautiful house where CIAM’s staff is busy working with different rural development programs for improving women’s quality of life.
Gladys, CIAM’s Director of Programs and Lupita, the Financial Administrator, sat down with me to talk about their organization. Unfortunately, the field staff could not accompany us as they were busy working in different meetings that day.
Gladys shared with me the programs at CIAM, which all integrate a genders lens and a holistic approach. The 4 main programs are: Health, Agroecology, Women’s Issues and Human Rights. A fifth program is in progress which will concentrate on researching these four thematic issues to facilitate even better their discussions with community members.
CIAM works in 3 areas in two states in Chiapas (Amatan and Hiutiupan), bordering the state of Tabasco, a very neglected area. It takes a day to drive there. However, once a month, the field staff (in charge of health, agroecology and women’s issues) drives there together to stay for almost a week, during which they give workshops to these communities on the issues mentioned in the parenthesis. After their week, they return to CIAM’s office to evaluate how it went and then use that evaluation to improve their training for the next month.
“Why did you choose to work with these states in Chiapas, especially since they are so far away?” I asked Gladys.
“These areas used to be filled with coffee plantations and the coffee there used to be exported. In 2000, the price of coffee went down globally and at the same time, a strong plague attacked the plantations, leaving the people in these communities in a difficult crisis. As a result, they need so much support now, especially since they are in an inaccessible area.
Also, the cultural trends that existed on these plantations have continued today within the families. For example, there still is the tradition of women being stolen at 13 or 14 years old to get married to the man who stole her. Another example is how daughters are being sold today for a sack of sugar and other foods.”
“What?! That still exists?” I was shocked!
“Yes, in the 21st century, those customs still exist today and not many people know about it.”
If you can’t even imagine how these customs work, I highly recommend you to watch the movie “Like Water For Chocolate.” At least that’s they way I can picture these traditions.
Gladys continued:
“There’s also a need to preserve the Zoque culture. Its identity is being lost as the new generation don’t want to speak the Zoque language anymore. Instead, they want to celebrate the Spanish holidays and we have seen many of them consuming high amounts of alcohol. This is a reason why we are emphasizing now workshops on “masculinity” where we bring men together to talk about their role in the community and how they perceive women to bring more awareness on gender equity.”
In spite of being an organization that works on low economic resources, CIAM is very organized in terms of their planning and evaluation. Each January, CIAM’s staff plans their activities for the entire calendar year! In order to schedule these activities, CIAM sends the communities they work with a questionnaire that will tell CIAM what are the issues requested so that CIAM can plan for workshops that address the community’s needs. What I really like is that their plan depends mostly on what is requested by the communities.
But my favorite aspect of CIAM is what they have done with their human rights program. CIAM has created a 3-year school program that has a focus on leadership development and invites 30 women from different social organizations to participate to become better leaders for themselves and their communities. The school started in 2004 and currently, they are about to start the second generation of graduates this fall.
I had hoped to visit one of their workshops but that was not possible, given that I will not be here when they have their next workshop. In any case, I could tell from my conversation with CIAM´s staff, and the photos and materials they showed me the hard work that CIAM is doing to support women and neglected communities in Chiapas.
Kat
