Posts Tagged ‘cooperatives’
The following was written by Katherine Zavala, Program Manager of Grassroots Alliances, after her recent site visit to Mexico.
I’ve just returned from Hidalgo, Mexico and I’m reflecting on my visit with the incredible indigenous women I met through IDEX partner Ñepi Behña.
Ñepi Behña (“Women with Dignity” in the indigenous otomi language) was founded to support indigenous women who live in the Valle de Mezquital area of Hidalgo. Read the rest of this entry »
A group of women who are part of APROSADSE's microcredit program.
March 8th is International Women’s Day and 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of this day to celebrate women across the globe.
IDEX staff and volunteers are taking part in Mother’s March in San Francisco- come join us at 4:30pm near the 16th St. BART station and march to protest war and oppression, support social justice and solidarity with women around the world. See our event posting HERE.
IDEX also stands in solidarity with our partners around the world who are celebrating this historic day. We are getting updates from Guatemala, Mexico, South Africa, and Nepal.
Read about the exciting events they are planning below:
AFEDES: In Sacatepéquez, Guatemala, AFEDES is coordinating with other women’s organizations in holding a press conference to demand the Guatemalan state fund the construction of a women’s center for the survivors of violence and to demand public investment for women’s development, including implementing the Femicide Law. Although the 2008 law, a huge victory for feminists and women’s rights organizations, considers violence against women a punishable act, many women and those in the judicial system are unaware of the law and thus implementation is weak. AFEDES has been creating awareness on the law and empowers women to speak up for their rights and come forward about abuse.
APROSADSE: APROSADSE is organizing a celebration with a group of women and mothers of families of the students who participate in APROSADSE’s radio distance-learning education program. They are planning a morning filled with exchanging experiences as housewives and integrating a lens of gender equity. The official theme for International Women’s Day activities is “Access to education for women and girls: training, science and technology” – sharing the rights that women have to education for economic development and social change.
Nepi Behña: Nepi Behña in Mexico is working together with RedPar – National Network of Rural Promoters and Advisors – in a National Gathering of indigenous, rural and mixed race women this week. The gathering will address the findings of an investigation they carried out last year about the impact of the food crisis and climate change – as well as the changes in migration patterns.
Positive Women’s Network: Positive Women’s Network in South Africa will be holding an event to celebrate the lives and achievements of women living with HIV/AIDS. The event will host 50 women from PWN outreach areas and will provide a platform for the women to recognize and applaud each other for their achievements as women, PLWHA, mothers, caregivers and community members. The event will also provide a discussion session for the women to engage each other on issues that predispose women to gender-based violence and risky behaviors leading to HIV/AIDS as well as methods of increasing the involvement of women in HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health policy design and implementation.
Whole World Women Association: WWWA, also in South Africa, will have an event on Saturday, March 12th to celebrate International Women’s Day. The theme is “Women’s Reproductive Health.” An International Women’s Day Panel Discussion will be held with representatives of the reproductive rights alliance, gender activists, and feminists attending.
Women’s Awareness Center Nepal: Women Awareness Center Nepal’s training and resource center will be inaugurated by rural women on March 8th. Women from the village will share their experiences of empowerment with the audience in the program and after the inauguration, 1000 members of WACN promoted cooperatives will participate in a rally in Kathmandu on the occasion of 100th Women’s Day in support of the IWD theme for this year “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: path way to decent work for women.” Informational placards displayed at the rally will address challenges such as, tax break for cooperatives run by village women, allocate more resources for disadvantaged women, timely drafting of the constitution, and the right to citizenship through motherhood.
Look for photos and an update from the event on our blog!
Dec
18Migration, Climate Change, and Action: A Conversation with IDEX Partner Ñepi Behña on International Migrants Day
2010
Posted by IDEX
In honor of International Migrants Day , we present to you an eye-opening conversation between IDEX’s Katherine Zavala and Adriana Welsh, Program Coordinator of Ñepi Behña , an IDEX partner based in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico which has been facing increasing levels of migration in recent years. Ñepi Behña works with over 650 indigenous women promoting gender equity and empowers women to build strong livelihoods. Their conversation is below.
A home in Hidalgo, Mexico of women involved in Nepi Behna
How do you see migration affecting the communities that Ñepi Behña works in?
Although migration has long been a strategy for reproduction and survival for rural communities, the migration patterns have been changing.
Migration has changed from something domestic and temporary – to nearby urban cities such as Mexico City or Guadalajara, for example. Now you see more migration to the United States for long periods of time and, on occasions, without return.
Have you been seeing any connections between climate change and increased levels of migration?
The effect of climate change on food production is very serious. We work in two regions of Hidalgo- the Valle region and the Sierra region.
In the Valle region, the rains arrived late in the season and there have also been freezes that came early that destroyed land and crops. This has serious consequences in the supply of staple foods like maize and beans, and crops from family gardens. Now we are looking into recovering those family gardens and get more seeds.
In the Sierra region, the hurricane season has caused tropical rains and landslides that have closed roads and isolated communities, leaving many of them without food or basic services. Moreover, the rains were in abundance with strong winds that also affected
cultivation.
And so, due in part to the lack of food and income to survive, both men and women have been migrating to look for employment. Without the right conditions for agricultural production, many families look to migration as a strategy for survival.
In this particular region in Hidalgo, the increase in migration in the last two decades has also been related to the serious abandonment of support and subsidies for agricultural production. Without subsidies and protection of the national market, many small producers are forced to migrate, leaving their land behind.
IDEX Program Officer, Katherine Zavala recently traveled to Mexico on field visits to our grantees there.
Today I traveled 2 hours north of Mexico City to the state of Hidalgo. Hidalgo’s capital is Pachuca. 45 minutes from Pachuca is the municipality Ismiquilpan, where staff from Ñepi Behña introduced me to the indigenous communities of the region called Valle de Mezquital.
Migration is a big problem in this community. As men migrate to cities in search of work, women are the ones that are left with the burden of caring for children, maintaining the house and finding some work to support the family until a remittance arrives.
About 20 years ago, the women in these communities organized a cooperative to sell natural beauty products to The Body Shop. Agave, known locally as maguey, is grown here. The women go through an arduous process to extract the fibers from the agave, which they then knit into bath sponges. Ñepi Behña has been assisting the cooperative by providing leadership development workshops to strengthen the cooperative and ensure its sustainability.
I met with the Cooperative Board who told me there are 250 women members from 5 communities participating in the cooperative. They have organized the cooperative into different committees to improve communication and coordination among themselves. Now they have committees of product quality, packing supervision, informing members of meetings, trainers, sales and problem solving. They have a Board with a President, Secretary and Treasurer that leads the committees.
I than had the great opportunity of being shown through the process of making a sponge, from chopping off a huge agave leave from the plant, to removing the moisture to reveal the fibers, to spinning the fibers into a thread. Seeing the whole process made me realize how time-consuming and labor-intensive it is. 8 big agave leaves are needed to make enough fiber for one bath sponge. And it takes at least 6 hours to have enough fiber ready for making the sponge. Unsurprisingly during my time there everyone was either knitting or manually spinning the fiber into string while talking to me.
Many of these women also save the money they earn with cooperative group savings plans. Women from the cooperative are trained to collect and track money from their peers. The administrator of this program called Las Abejitas (Little Bees) then deposits the money in a bank account. At the end of the year, they hand out savings interests to the women based on how consistently they saved and not by how much they put in. “It’s a way to put more value on the habit of saving even though it can be a minimal amount,” says Luciana, the administrator of Las Abejitas.
It was a great experience to see how these women are empowering and supporting themselves to initiate local economic opportunities. Plus it was fascinating to learn how everyday Body Shop products are made and supporting each other.
IDEX Program Officer, Katherine Zavala (pictured 2nd on the right), is currently in Mexico on field visits to our grantees there.
Today I went to Comitán de Dominguez, where our partner EduPaz is based. Comitán is 90 minutes south of San Cristóbal de las Casas on the way to the Guatemalan border. EduPaz had planned to take me on a community visit to Tziscao –but first, a much-needed stop at their office for pastries and coffee.
To enter their office, I had to pass through their fair trade store called EcoPaz (Economy for Peace), which was opened to sell products made by the community groups and collectives that received microcredit from EduPaz.
This season, it was interesting to see a beekeeping collective is producing lots of honey and there was plenty of honey on sale.
During breakfast, the 3 full-time EduPaz staff introduced themselves and got me up to speed on the community we were going to visit. And so headed off to Tziscao, a community of around 6,000 people, located an hour from Comitán.
In Tziscao, EduPaz has built a health center which now has a doctor to serve the surrounding communities. Soon there will be 5 alternative medicine interns from the School of Alternative Medicine in Tuxtla Gutierrez on site to provide holistic health services, which is great since this area is really underserved in regards to medical care.
About 15 to 20 community members go to the Tziscao health center each week. There’s only 1 other hospital in the area, but it is limited in it services and just has 1 doctor and 1 nurse. Plus the only supplies they have are of anti-parasite medicine and contraceptives. The EduPaz health center is a much-needed resource and also serves as a meeting space for farmers or cooperative members in Tziscao.
An indigenous couple is currently living on site to take care of the health center: Baldemar and his wife Eloisa. They moved into the center 3 months ago and Baldemar is also currently being trained on how to run the agroecology program at the center.
EduPaz is also in the process of constructing an Agroecology Training Site. They already have started growing organic vegetables – including squash, radishes, peanuts, chayote, chipilin (herbs for broths) and green tomatoes. While I was there, Baldemar showed me where they’re planning to build a chicken coup, and a space for farm animals including rabbits and sheep, as well as fruit trees (avocado, lemon, apple, pear and banana plants) AND a greenhouse to grow tomatoes. It was quite impressive.
They’ve already built a pigsty and a space for a biodigestor. The biodigestor will use the pig manure to create natural gas to produce energy for the center. They will install the biodigestor in August, at the same time IRRI-Mexico, an IDEX catalyst grantee in Mexico City, will train Baldemar and other community members from Tziscao on how to install and maintain this technology. The goal is to encourage them to also use this in their own homes.
I also visited 2 community groups in Tziscao: an organic coffee cooperative and a family grocery store collective. Both have received microcredit loans from EduPaz. They shared how helpful it was to access microcredit through EduPaz and how much better it was than going through a bank which requires a lot of complicated paperwork and restrictive lending terms. Plus the banks only loan large sums of money, which is not necessary for these groups’ projects.
All in all, it was incredibly rewarding to learn more about EduPaz’s work and meet some of the people that are benefiting from their programs and working so hard to continue that they are successful.
IDEX Program Office, Katherine Zavala, is currently in Mexico on field visits with our grantees there.
Today I visited a community called San Francisco from the municipality of Teopisca, 1 hour south of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. This Tzeltal community of 300 people has been supported by DESMI for 20 years. The focus of the work is to assist 52 families to work collectively in various income-generating activities.
Don Pablo is the community representative of San Francisco Teopisca and has been the liaison with DESMI and communicates the progress of each collective income-generating project. He accompanied me during my visit, showed me around the community and introduced me to various members.
We went to a couple of parcels of land where organic vegetables are grown. The first patch of land is used mostly as a demonstration site. Here they showcase organic agricultural practices with new crops to communities. Thanks to workshops provided by DESMI, participants learn how to train other community members on these practices, which spreads the knowledge throughout the community.
Last year they cultivated red onions using vermicompost, which yielded successful results. They grew so many red onions that Don Pablo still has many of them hanging in his house. “We don’t have to buy them at the market anymore,” he told me, “when you hang the onions, they can last up to 8 months.”
8 indigenous women are managing the second parcel of organic vegetables that Don Pablo showed me. They grow lettuce, beets, carrots and onions. DESMI is in the process of teaching these women seed-saving techniques. Already the women are waiting for the flowers of the onions to blossom, and then they will harvest the seeds to sow.
Don Pablo also introduced me to women, who are growing medicinal plants such as dandelions, aloe and Madonna lilies. They create creams and medicinal herbal infusions from extracts of these plants to sell in the community.
Finally, I met with 3 members of a bakery collective, which has 30 members, all women. This collective has been baking bread for 15 years now, and sustainably generates income for its members. Marta, a 51-year old woman who has 7 children, recently became president of the bakery collective’s board. She explained how the collective has helped bring the community together, as before none of the neighbors used to know each other and now they are work together.
DESMI provides these different groups through technical assistance and supports them in strengthening their unity as well as raising awareness in gender equality. DESMI will wait for the community groups to bring forward their future plans of how they want to improve their livelihoods. The members of San Francisco Teopisca are hoping to restore their land with more trees and are requesting support from DESMI for this project.
Today I thought I would have the privilege to sleep in. I stayed the night at the Morelia caracol and I slept in a hammock in a cabin shared with the DESMI staff. The DESMI staff had to wake up early as their workshops were going to start at 6am. I watched them all leave from my hammock.
Then Rosaluz came in and said, “I tried to come last night to talk to you but the lights were out.”
“Yes, that’s right. The DESMI staff wanted to sleep because they had to wake up early today,” I responded as I snuggled in my hammock.
“Well, I wanted to tell you that the Junta would like you to talk to the women artisans.”
“Oh, that’s great. When would they like to get together?”
“The women decided they want to talk to you before the DESMI workshop.”
“Oh, that workshop starts at 6am.” Then it suddenly sunk in. “That means they want to talk to me now?”
“Um… yes.”
So much for sleeping in!
When I entered the training hall, the women artisans were already waiting for me. They started the meeting by welcoming me and asked me to talk about my visit.
All these women are representatives, chosen by their communities to be responsible for coming to the trainings and then inform the rest on how the cooperative is coming about. In fact, the women have just started this process and after talking to me, they will continue their training on what constitutes a cooperative.
This group is unique as they are the first group of artisans who have decided to become an autonomous cooperative. This means that they don’t have to go through the long legal process that is required when registering with the governmental system. Instead, they need to be recognized by the Junta (Good Governance Council). Nevertheless, they want to create a cooperative that is legitimate, so they are taking the positive parts of what is usually required to have a cooperative.
I asked them what was their dream of having this cooperative, why did they want to form it. After some silence, one artisan spoke out:
“Our dream to have a cooperative is to be united. We are all trying to sell our products in the market to earn some money but we don’t want to compete with each other. We don’t want one municipality to sell more than the other. (The cooperative has members from 7 municipalities and 4 regions.) Instead, we want to unite so that the money can be distributed to everyone.”
I could tell that not all the women were jumping to talk openly, except the coordinator who was doing a great job leading and encouraging the group while she tried to comfort her baby at the same time. But the fact that they are all participating in this workshop speaks a thousand words.
The women are here because they want to be here. This is a workshop that they have asked to have and not because it is being offered by an organization. You can tell the difference as I can see that even the quiet ones are paying close attention.
This cooperative is ambitious, trying to include indigenous women who speak different Mayan languages and Spanish. But it is their decision as a group to create this cooperative and apparently that communication among them has been very clear!
Kat
