women’s weekly: By honouring a woman, we honour a whole nation

This time round, we bring to you some great women around the world, who have worked hard in order to make ends meet and to also help their fellow women by forming them into associations in order to help them to improve their living standards. Below are some of these great women:

Mawulawe Association in Togo Struggling to provide iodised salt
Mawulawe is a group of eight women from Kpele-Adeta who dedicated themselves to providing their community with a source of clean high quality iodised salt.  To begin, they first had to accumulate some savings, which took them two years.

Despite several setbacks in which they lost the salt due to theft and storm damage, the women persisted. Besides enabling the members of the group to pay for the schooling and health care needs of their own children and contribute to the family income, their initiative has created employment opportunities for other rural women who can purchase salt from them on credit and resell it in small shops for a profit.

By providing a source of affordable iodised salt they contribute to prevention of goitre, which was endemic due to lack of iodine. The group also participate in making people aware of the essential need for iodine in the diet.

Kusum Jain in India Giving hope to the helpless
Kusum Jain (38) from Jaipur has been working for 13 years as project director for women’s empowerment in rural areas of Rajasthan. Among the many services she has performed, she contacted a group of leprosy sufferers walking along the road, motivated them to give up begging, trained them with shelter and medical treatment, thus rehabilitating over 500 lepers.

She conducted awareness training of men and women in civic rights, women’s rights, the environment and other issues. Kusum Jain helped eight villages solve their water problem by getting the old dried-up wells deepened and repaired. With help from colleagues, she planted 70,000 saplings of various free species thus fighting desertification. The HIV/Aids prevention programme she designed for tribal communities involved in prostitution is being implemented in 21 village.

Bao Cailuan in China Greening the hills
In the winter of 1990, Bao Cailuan (59) a rural technician in Shaolian village (xi county, Anhui province) contacted women in 16 households to lease together three hectares of barren fields and plant 19,700 fir trees thus turning the land into a forestry centre.

They did the same to another 17 hectares the following year. In 1995, despite the slump in the tea market, Bao Cailuan leased another 20 hectares planting them in persimmon, gingko and greengage for tea production. She brought tea-processing machines and managed the production, processing and marketing of teas making a good profit.

Today, thanks to the efforts, courage and persistence of Bao Cailuan, a total of 53 hectares of once unproductive hills are now flourishing with trees, tea and vegetable gardens, and food processing sites.

Geogina Perez Martinez in Cuba Transforming wastelands into vegetable garden:
Geogina Perez Martinez (62), a graduate in Geography from Havana, began in 1988, to transform a piece of communal wasteland in the rural community of Arroy Arenas of into a vegetable form. In 1992 a group of 40 vegetable growers selected her as president of the group despite her being the only woman.

By organising workshops in the community to train people in soil conservation and agro-ecological techniques. She has been creating a culture of environmental protection in the area. The farm has been designated as a national reference for its productivity and social impact. It is an example of how unused land can be made productive. The consumption of vegetables has increased, and traditional methods of food conservation have been revived.