Look out World - here come the women of SIDA COOP!!!
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 11/Nov/2010 10:04, 34 days ago
The entrepreneurial spirit is alive in North West Cameroon. I just got back from a three day tour of SIDA COOP projects. SIDA COOP is a women’s empowerment initiative with the International Labor Organization and IDF. This program aims at promoting entrepreneurship and mitigates poverty amongst women living with HIV/AIDS in Kumbo, Wum, Bali and Bamenda (towns of the North West Region). In the program, women can apply for small loans tostart up small businesses. IDF and ILO provide training the women on business skills and positive living and also provide counsellors to follow-up with the women.My Manager in front of the Wum officeThe women are quite inspirational; many of them were initially recluse and dependent on other people financially. Now the majority of them have successful small business (raising and selling poultry and pigs, gardens, seamstresses, buying and selling food items and house wares). It is anticipated that within the next few months some women will actually graduate from the program and will have thriving businesses and be completely autonomous.My Colleague in front of the Kumbo OfficeOne women’s business spirit was particularly evident through the success of her business. She took a loan one year ago and acquired 4 pigs. She also started a garden where she grows and sells vegetables using the pig manure to enrich the soil. Her pig farm has grown substantially over the year due to one of the pigs giving birth as well as new acquisitions. Currently she has 12 pigs and will sell a number of them during the holiday season which will guarantee her a high price.Pigs from a pig farm owned by one of the women in Wum In addition to financial stability, this program has also helped these women fight the stigma and discrimination they used to face in their villages. Many women mentioned how now they are respected as business women in their communities and how they have noticed that they are not as stigmatized. As well, many women have built up their confidence through the program and now speak publicly about HIV and AIDS and are advocates for their support groups.Interestingly enough, in some areas this program has been so popular that people who are not HIV positive said they were HIV positive in order to benefit from the support ILO and IDF were providing. This led to the requirement that applicants for the project provide their CD4 counts in order to confirm they are eligible for the program. Another interesting result from this program has been the reaction from men who are not advocating loudly to IDF and ILO that they should not be excluded from this sort of program and that it is not only women who need support.This project was a pilot project and only time and the financial situation of ILO will tell if it will continue in the future. Regardless of its future however, it is quite evident that many women of the North West region have seen an improvement in their quality of life thanks to this project.Menchum Waterfalls - we stopped on our way to Wum