Women ending poverty: WORTH notes from the field

Meet Raheli Paulo

Raheli with some of the children in her nursery class

"Raheli Paulo is the chairperson of the Upendo Group. She knows how to read and write and she is respected by her community. She has 4 children of her own, one of them is disabled. She also takes care of 4 orphans who were left by her late co-wife. When the program was introduced to her community she was the one who took the initiative of mobilizing the other women, forming the Upendo Group (Upendo means love in Swahili). She believed that the program was a God given opportunity to them, which was going to transform their community.

The first time we visited the community last year she told us she thought that women in her community were going to take the lead in the development of her community. Their husbands own many cattle and marry many women, and are now very poor after most of the cattle died during the drought. As the men have nothing to be proud of, they have resorted to heavy drinking, leaving the burden of caring for the children solely to their wives.

Because Raheli is the most educated (she didn’t complete her primary school education) among the women and most men in her community, her desire is to see every child in the community become literate. In her small community, there are 32 children under the age of five, and no school that can cater for their educational needs.

Victoria, WORTH Coordinator, and Raheli's children

Raheli took up the challenge and decided to start a nursery school for them. She has been doing this for about two months now. Every day she brings the children together and teaches them everything she knows, from songs to reading and writing. Raheli is not a trained teacher but she is determined to bring a change in her community. One of the NGOs (ILAMARATAKI LOKOREI) working with the Maasai communities saw her efforts and have decided to put up a nursery school for the children.

The men in this community have noticed the good changes that the WORTH women are bring to them. On our visit the men approached the Kilimanjaro Assistant Coordinator requesting her to start a similar program for them."'

-Victoria Munene
WORTH Coordinator
Tanzania

For more information about WORTH, please visit our website at: http://www.worthwomen.org

Tanzania: Meet the Kisha Kya Maria group

"The Kisha Kya Maria group, based in Ibosa Village in Bukoba Rural, is very special. The group was formed by elderly women between 50 – 90 years old and with the wonderful help of the local Empowerment Worker (EW). As she was working with the groups she came to the realization that old women didn’t have the courage to join WORTH because they didn’t have enough strength to do manual labor in order to earn income. The EW decided to spend extra time telling them about WORTH and the several opportunities available to them, in terms of literacy, savings, and microfinance.

As a result, she was able to mobilize them to form the 22-member Kisha Kya Maria group. Most of the women in this group are grandmothers - widows who are taking care of orphans left to them by their deceased children. The 22 members of this group solely care for 105 orphans (the highest number of orphans in all the 260 WORTH groups in Tanzania!).

The group is very active and has readily embraced the WORTH program. Despite their old age, they are working through Our Group because they are committed to becoming literate. I attended one of their reading classes and each woman was proud to read one page from the book and explain to the others in their vernacular to make sure each one of them understood what was read. The members expressed their need for reading glasses as they were saying that the scripts were very small.

One of the group members, Asteria Ernest, is very grateful for her involvement in WORTH. She is the chairperson of the Kisha kya Maria group and also a 78-year-old widow caring for 4 orphans left behind by her deceased children. Talking about WORTH, the friendly grandmother had this to say:

'Before the program was introduced to us I was finding it very difficult to take care of the children left under my care. Now I have joined the group where we do our savings every week. I have taken a small loan of 5,000 at 10%.  I am doing a small business of selling fish and tobacco. Whatever I am making from the business is helping me feed the children. I am hoping that in the future I will be able to buy a piglet'.

Another inspiring group member, Pulkeria Mkaryoga, is 87 years old. She is a widow as her husband passed away in 1987. She never had any children. When Pulkeria's husband died, she was left alone on her small plot to take care of herself. As years passed by, her house collapsed and she had to sell the plot in order to meet her needs for food and shelter. After a while she became homeless. She was taken in by good neighbors until last year when they told her to leave.

The Empowerment Worker (EW) in her area found her in very bad shape: her feet were swollen and she was extremely withdrawn. People had begun thinking that she was mad. The EW, eager to help, invited Pulkeria to her home. Since then Pulkeria has been staying with the EW and her family, and her condition has improved. The EW encouraged her to join the Kisha kya Maria group.

Pulkeria has this to say about the program:

'When I was young I used to be a good neighbor and a member of some women's groups in my village.  In one of the groups I was the chairperson. As the age was catching up with me, I became less involved with the groups since in most of the groups members were doing manual work to increase their income. My strength was failing me and I gave up on the idea of becoming a member of any group. When WORTH was introduced to me by the EW, I took up the challenge and joined the Kisha kya Maria group. In this group we are learning how to save our money on a weekly basis and also do some businesses.'

When asked where she gets the money for her weekly contributions she said that, 'whenever a Good Samaritan gives me some money to buy tobacco, I use the money for my weekly savings. You know I cannot do any business because I cannot walk far.'  The EW sometimes helps Pulkeria earn money for saving. She has a kiosk for selling tea and buns and asks Pulkeria to go there when she can to oversee the business. In return Pulkeria gets her money for savings.

Pulkeria is very grateful to the WORTH program because it has given her a new home in her own community. She said, 'I am very happy to have a family through WORTH. Without the group even if I was to die today, nobody would have noticed it. People would come to realized later that the old lady passed away long time ago.'

The other women in the Kisha Kya Maria group shared similar sentiments. They also are very grateful to the program because through the group they have learned to save small amounts of money on a weekly basis. Some of them have taken some loans from the group and have started small businesses that sell tobacco and fish. From their businesses they are able to improve the lives of the orphans under their care in a meaningful way."

-Victoria Munene
WORTH Coordinator
Tanzania

For more information about WORTH, please visit our website at: http://www.worthwomen.org