Restore Dignity to Women in Mali

Each year in Mali, up to 2,400 women are in danger of developing obstetric fistula, a devastating but largely curable condition. Women living with untreated fistula are often shamed, isolated from their communities, and left to live in poverty.

That’s why IntraHealth’s Fistula Mali Project has provided successful repair surgeries for over 1,000 women. As part of our comprehensive treatment plan, we’ve helped many of these women to harness their own earning potential so they can rejoin their communities and begin making a living.  

Recently, 46 women completed our week-long business management training and received coaching and financial support to establish their businesses. Their ideas range from sheep-raising and hair styling to selling spices, soap, wood, or doughnuts. 

After presenting their business plans at the end of the training, each woman received 40,000 CFA(West African francs) to start their businesses and will receive another 10,000 CFA after demonstrating success. This money—which amounts to about US$100—is a life-changing gift for the women we help.

Hard to imagine that you can, quite literally, change a life for $100. And when you change a woman's economic future, you change her family's future. When you change families, you change communities. Regions. Nations. This investment will transform her life from one of despair and isolation into one of independence and hope. A victim of circumstance no longer - now these women can become business owners in charge of their own futures and empowered to invest in themselves and their families.  

Your participation in the Fistula Project will not only transform the physical and communal lives of women in Mali, but will help them take the next step back into the world—putting them in charge of their own futures and empowering them to change not just their own lives, but those of their communities and beyond.

Links:

• Fistula treatment and prevention