1.     Rural Women Empowerment at GPLT

2.      Rural Women Empowerment and Gender

3.      Rural Women Empowerment,  Constructive Masculinity

4.      Rural Women Empowerment Vs GBV

 

2025 SUSTAINABLE EMPOWERMENT PROJECT

OVERVIEW

This 2025 project is just the continuation what we started in 2024. This time, we expect to cover 10 villages in total, and reach out to 150 more village women with income generating activities and 100 children in education. The women will be involved in income generating activites of sewing, animal rearing and small business. The children will be helped to enroll in local schools and we shall bring them support with school fees and equipment. DVD screening will continue and we expect to reach out to 300 people including women, children and the local people. The aim of all these activities is to empower the beneficiaries to become financially self-reliant, which can reduce gender-based violence in the households of DRC villages. These women also take counselling sessions. We shall be organizing events at GPLT regarding women empowerment and related issues, such as gender, masculinity, patriarchy, etc.

SEWING

We will continue with the sewing activities at Munya centre, and we hope we shall have more sewing machines to enroll more women as well.  The learning process will cover six months of theories and practice combined, and the learners will get certificates upon completing the learning. Most of the women in this activity have endured rape and related abuses, others are from destitute families, and have experienced gender-based violence. Their empowerment will help them to be confident, self-reliant, and morally stable. 

ANIMAL REARING

The women will also involve the activity of rearing animals, including pigs, guinea pigs and goats. The women involved in this animal rearing project will have one piglet to start with, for each member. When this pig begins to reproduce, the women will sell the piglets (this is also the process with other animals). Thus, the pigs that the women breed provide an income. Male piglets will not be shared among members; the person whose pig produced them will keep them. If there will be two male piglets, for instance, the owner will keep one and will take the other to the team manager who keeps it. Once mature, then people around, who also have pigs, will be bringing their female pigs to it in case they need a male. This will be done by depositing some money to the owner who will in turn take the money to their accountant. This money will be used to purchase another piglet that can help another team.

Animal rearing helps generate an income. The rearing of animals will allow these women to contribute financially to their households and towards their children’s school fees. For these women, such contributions will be evidence of their independence.

SMALL BUSINESS

In small business, we shall involve more women. They will be reselling small items and some produce from their fields. These women will be grouped in different groups based on their village of origins. At the end of each month, every woman will be giving to the group a certain percentage (1%) of what she will have sold. Once five women contribute, that is already what another new member can start with. Some women will navigate across all the income-generating activities and this in case they are able to. The items they will be selling include, sugar, salt, rice, beans, cornflower, tomatoes, vegetables, bananas, palm-cooking oil, bars of soap, vegetables…

EDUCATION

We will support the women and the children in their education. With the GPLT project, we will support the formal school education children in Nyangezi and Katana villages. We shall help the children to be registered in a local school, and from there we shall pay them school fees and bring school equipment to them. The school equipment will include notebooks, pens (red, blue and black), pencils and rubbers, and school bags. These children will not be grouped in one school; they will be scattered in different schools in different areas. Follow up on their school performance will be done to ascertain they are doing well.

The women, including widows, will be supported in their education, the learning of a life-saving skill of sewing and basics in business. Importantly, they will also learn basics in literacy and numeracy. Literacy and numeracy will help them have basics on how to read and how to records basic data on their small business and even sewing. They will be learning this programme in order to start sewing activities. If they do not know basics in reading and writing, they will not be able to sew or do their small business. Those who can read and write will be ready to involve in sewing programme. These basics will also help the widows and the women to get and send written messages to relatives and friends, and even vote for their choice in case there are elections.

The local population also will also benefit of the education via screening DVDs. Education using educative DVDs is a tool we shall be using to empower women, children and the local population. This education mostly aims to equip the beneficiaries about how to keep healthy and hygienic. This will help them avoid contaminating some diseases and if they are already contaminated, they will know how to live with it. The DVDs they will be watching include, avoid malaria, understanding pregnancy, Effects of drugs, periods, etc. We have a target of screening these DVDs with 300 people by the end of next year 2025.

 

EMPOWERING WIDOWS

Widows will not be left out in our empowerment activities. They will get support to become self-reliant. Widows from the same village will work in the same team. Widows’ empowerment cannot go without culture. War widowed young women, as well as older widows, are numerous in the DR Congo. They have become the heads of their families and they need to work. If they do not work, their children cannot have anywhere to sleep or anything to eat. Therefore, they break the cultural traditions in order for their families to survive. They say that ‘if no husband is alive, can we wait for the one who does not exist anymore?’

The women whose husbands are alive never do the jobs these widows do. In the DR Congo, cultures have created gendered activities and work. There is work for men and work for women. A woman doing men’s job is said to wish bad luck for her husband and this may cause her abuse in the home. Children are educated accordingly and so they grow knowing that activities are gendered