Whether you live in Africa, India, or elsewhere in the developing world, if you’re a woman living in poverty, you have a lot in common with your sisters. Millions of women battle man-made disadvantages including:
[ted id=962]
The women of the Shingirirai Trust know firsthand about the power of community and the sisterhood of other women for daily survival and support. Still, the urgent need remains for better medical care. In sub-Saharan Africa there are more HIV infections and less doctors to treat them than anywhere else in the world. Since 2001, Cape Town doctor Mitchell Besser’s ‘mothers2mothers’ program has turned a dire situation into part of the solution.
Latifa and pupils at a tailoring workshop
In Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in the developing world, disadvantaged women may have some choice over their lives and livelihoods if they can earn a living. They can hope to earn a living if they get at least a basic education. They can get a basic education if they can get to school. (One in four don’t). They can stay in school if they’re not married before they turn 18 years old (four out of ten girls are forced into marriage, and fifty percent of these girls become pregnant, before that age).
UN Women was founded in July 2010. One of its main aims is to create the conditions for women to work and support their families. Empowering women is showing positive results for regenerating communities all over the developing world. That’s because women are more likely to invest their earnings in the health, education and wellbeing of their families and communities. Yet in Zimbabwe as elsewhere, women lag far behind men in access to land, credit, and decent jobs.
By the time you read this, I’ll be back in Zimbabwe for my annual visit, working with the extraordinary women who run the Shingirirai Trust. And sharing record high temperatures. At 27ºC during the night, rising to 37ºC by midday, it’s been too hot to go barefoot outside, or to go out at all. The hottest summer for 50 years. Heat frays the nerves, and coping without running water doesn’t help. Some of my team have had to get up at 3.30 am to queue at a water point, waiting hours then trudging back with not enough water for the family’s thirst, cooking, cleanliness or sanitation.
Beauty is ready for another day at work so that Paidamoyo, 8, can get an education
Here in Zimbabwe, as in much of Africa, education is prized as a way out of the cycle of poverty and exploitation for the younger generation. In our last post, we told the story of Beauty’s determination to earn enough to educate her children. Her son, eight-year-old Paidamoyo, is one of the young graduates from our Early Child Development (ECD) program at the Shingirirai Trust.
Starring in a story with all the plot twists and pathos a Hollywood director could wish for, Beauty Makombe is well named: she stands tall and spare in her own space and her face has an angular peculiarity that sometimes shades into conventional beauty. She is young, strong and full of hope for a better future in a less turbulent Zimbabwe.
I'm reading about Vanavevhu, empowering young breadwinners in Zim: http://t.co/zzvozOpi
