The KONRAD-ADENAUER-FOUNDATION and ist partners:
Women’s Action for Development (WAD)
INTRODUCTION.
Women's Action for Development (WAD), is a Self-Help Organisation which aims at uplifting the socio-economic and socio-political situation of primarily Namibian rural women.
The organisation was established in 1994 and is active in 6 regions of the country, namely Omusati (north); Kunene (north-west); Erongo (west); Otjozondjupa (centraleast); Omaheke (east) and Hardap (south), with the intention of eventually expanding to all 13 regions of the country - the availability of funds permitting.
WAD receives its core funding from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German NGO, together with various other noteworthy international and local donors.
The organisation is outspoken, fearless, and dynamic with equally fearless and dynamic goals. It is well structured, go-ahead and continuously visible in the print and electronic media.
WAD has been successful because of:
- its holistic approach of developing rural people;
- its excellent track record in financial management;
- the fact that Co-ordinators and Fieldworkers have been appointed in the regions to train project members on a daily basis;
- the fact that its field staff members are equipped with appropriate vehicles to reach the most remote villages in the country;
- the continuous upgrading of the skills of staff members; and
- because strong directives are continuously given through to staff and project members by its Management.
Although the organisation focusses primarily on women, the organisation is male friendly and has taken up numerous male members in its projects across the country.
Socio-economic empowerment -
When WAD becomes active in a region, it works through decision-makers, traditional authorities, churches, schools, education and health authorities, etc to reach community members.
WAD members are firstly expected to undergo basic training in Hygiene, Nutrition, Family Planning, Child Development Care, AIDS awareness, etc.
This is followed by skills development training (of their choice) provided that a markets exists for the skills in which they are trained.
The next step is for WAD to assist the project members with kick-start equipment or materials to start various projects. This is given once only, as WAD discourages a hands-out or dependency mentality among its members. The WAD staff members then further assist the project members on a daily basis with further training, with the view to guide them to self-sustainability.
Simultaneously, training is provided to the project members on how to start a savings club. The Post Offices are used in the rural areas because commercial banks are too expensive for rural people to open savings accounts. One account is opened where a project group would save, although each member has her/his own savings book which clearly depicts her savings and withdrawals.
Since the organisation has many illiterate women in the savings clubs, different colour stamps are pasted in her savings book to assist her to understand how much money she has actually saved. For example, a yellow stamp represents 50 c; a red stamp, N$1,00 while a blue stamp represents N$2,00, etc (presently 1 US$ = 10 N$).
Savings clubs have proven to be very useful for project members to acquire greater buying power, eg. when expensive equipment is needed, the project members put their savings together to purchase the item, whereas it would have been very difficult for one woman to acquire expensive items if she were operating on her own.
An unexpected positive spin-off of savings clubs is how it sensitises women, right from the beginning, to keep their families small. For example a woman with 2 children would be able to save much more or withdraw much less than a woman with S children. This awareness is very quickly identified by the members and it very quickly and positively influences the members (especially young female project members) to keep their families small, because the evidence is there to be seen and experienced.
Among WAD's successful projects are -
A 6-member Busy Hands Sewing project in the Otjozondjupa region which had N$35 000,00 (US$ 1,00 = N$10,00) in their savings club at the end of July 2002;
An 18-member Spitzkoppe Community Based Tourism Project in the Erongo region, which had more than N$30 000,00 in their savings club at the end of May 2002;
A 16 member Mosquito net sewing project in the Omusati region, which had N$30 000,00 in their savings club at the end of November 2001. Interesting to note is that the incidence of malaria has dropped by 40% in those communities where project members sold their mosquito nets.
Socio-political empowerment: WAD is one of the few women's movements in Africa that actively empowers its members in this field and the results are excellent. WAD has actively assisted its members to establish "Women's Voice bodies" in the regions in which it is active.
The WAD members choose their own bold and assertive female or male representatives to act as their official mouthpiece in the regions.
The Women's Voice bodies, which consist of 7 members per region, stand together as a united force and address social problems within their communities, by working through the decision-makers, community leaders, traditional authorities, etc to assist them in solving their community problems and in acquiring their numerous needs in their villages.
For instance, the Hardap Women's Voice in the South of the country, successfully lobbied their authorities to erect a mortuary at one of the small villages in the region. Today the mortuary is built and it serves as a "monument" for its members, with the message that if they stand together with a sense of purpose, they could achieve anything they wanted.
Women's Voices also lobby appropriate authorities and their communities on educational and health problems, drug abuse, alcoholism, AIDS awareness and also ensure that jobs in the regions are secured for people of that specific region and that people from other regions are not "imported" to their regions for work.
Women's Voices also take up membership in various development committees at Local and Regional level and continuously encourage women to stand as candidates in elections, with the view to take up positions of power in the regions.
It goes without saying that WAD very strictly adheres to a non party-political philosophy, but encourages women to fearlessly venture into the male dominated world of politics and governance of the country.
Once such Women's Voices are firmly established in the regions, it is the intention of WAD to assist its members to establish a "National Women's Voice" which will be elected from the best-performing members of the regional "Women's Voice" bodies, to serve as the Official Mouthpiece for WAD members on National Level and to lobby Parliamentarians, Cabinet Members, or even the President himself, on issues pertaining to the development of rural communities.
With the assistance of the Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia, WAD members have been trained to graduate as "Para-legal Advisors" in the regions to assist rural people with their legal problems. The result was that 12 people at grassroots level have graduated and 2 para-legal advisors per region have been assigned to the WAD Training Centres to perform this important task.
Through this highly challenging part of the programme, WAD has managed to capture the interest of the print and electronic media as well as decision-makers, the private sector, etc, which in turn has brought positive returns to the organisation in the form of funding.
WAD presently has a membership of over 4 000 women and men, while thousands of other Namibians are sensitised on a daily basis through their respective languages in the regions, regarding the importance of engaging in development activities, as well as through its publications and educational talks in the mass media.
A NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY FOR NAMIBIAN RURAL PEOPLE FOR THE FUTURE:
It is a well-known fact that Namibia is the driest country in the sub-continent and consequently, firewood for use as domestic fuel is in short supply.
The vast stretches of land covered with intruder bush, are on private property in the central regions of the country and does not cover the northern areas where most of the inhabitants of Namibia live.
It should further be added that the relatively densely populated northern regions have been stripped of its original vegetation, especially because of the tradition of building enclosed homesteads of wooden poles to protect families from marauding animals.
The clearing of fields to cultivate traditional crops has also added to the present day shortage of firewood especially in the country with a rather poor fainfall.
Traditional women, whose traditional task it is to collect firewood for the preparation of food therefore, find themselves in an increasingly difficult situation to find wood and have to walk several kilometres and spend numerous unproductive hours on that chore alone. Some local entrepreneurs with vehicles at their disposal, charge exorbitant prices for firewood which has lead to wood for domestic fuel having become a rather expensive commodity.
Conscious of these prevailing conditions in northern Namibia, in particular, but also elsewhere in the country - and also to heed the call of our President to stop the felling of trees in the country, WAD has introduced a substitutive fuel for domestic use, namely "Paper bricks".
The organisation acquired a number of paper brick press moulds to experiment with the effectivity of the idea. Stacks of unsold daily newspapers from printing houses were further acquired, free of charge and several unused household containers were filled with paper pulp from the hand-shredded and soaked newspapers.
When pressed in the paper brick press and dried for a couple of days in sunny Namibia, these bricks turned out to be a useful substitute for firewood to boil water or to prepare a meal for rural households.
The usefulness of the paper bricks is greatly enhanced when used in energy-saving stoves, locally known as the "Tsotso-stove ".
For example, only a quarter paper brick, when broken in halves, can be used to boil a litre of water within 15 minutes in these stoves. Furthermore, one of the organisation's training centres in southern Namibia was able to feed 40 women on a large pot of stew, after having used 10 paper bricks to cook the food.
In another instance, WAD came to the rescue of poverty-stricken members of an informal settlement called "Omitara" in the Omaheke region (eastern Namibia), who stood accused by commercial farmers of illegally felling their trees to acquire firewood, by training them to produce 2 000 paper bricks within 2 weeks for household fuel. This meaningful alternative for fire wood has contributed greatly in alleviating serious tension between the farmers and the Omitara community.
Fired by the successes of the aforementioned, WAD immediately stepped up its sensitisation programmes in training its field staff more intensely in the use of paper bricks in all six of its training centres in the rural areas.
The WAD field staff keenly grasped the idea and started to demonstrate the effectivity of the paper bricks at their training centres, public gatherings and small villages, giving countless dozens of paper bricks away, free of charge, to establish a new culture, but also to entrench the other benefits. These include saving many unproductive hours for women to find firewood; making more time available for women to engage in income-generating activities; making more time for their families.
The idea is further to establish a dependency on paper bricks among rural communities and to establish the manufacture and sale of paper bricks as an income generating project.
Since cultural traditions, however, have been established over several generations and rural people are by and large guided in their daily lives by culture, a switch to the use of paper bricks as domestic fuel, will take some time to become firmly imbedded.
WAD however, is optimistic that with the assistance of schools, churches, youth movements and traditional authorities, this new source of energy for domestic use, will eventually become well established and become a new way of living.
Veronica De Klerk
Executive Director
Women's Action for Development (WAD)