Gender Equality Nigeria Project #3437

Help Women in Nigeria Become Poultry Farmers

by Women for Women International

Project Report | Dec 11, 2013
The Importance of Cooperatives

By Lyndsay Booth | Online and Multimedia Coordinator

Many of the women in Women for Women International – Nigeria’s program live in isolated rural communities whose economies are based upon a limited number of agricultural products. Forming a cooperative, in this context, helps prevent too many women from starting the same type of business. It also builds a strong network of community support for cooperative members and helps them to stretch their personal resources further. Habiba Nakande, a member of the Godiya Women cooperative, said: “The formation of cooperatives to us is a good long-term investment, which is going to help us.” While cooperatives are not the sole source of income for most of their members, they provide women with a practical way to supplement their income.

In the third month of the sponsorship program, Women for Women International – Nigeria, introduces program participants to the nuts and bolts of cooperatives. They help women to identify potentially profitable business areas, navigate the legal process to officially register as a cooperative business, open a bank account and locate trainers to help them develop the technical and business skills they will need. Once the cooperatives are formed, they continue to receive advice and support from the organization.

There are many different types of cooperatives, including a group that makes batik products, one that leases a well and sells water and another that produces soap. Women in the program are pleased with the opportunity that being in a cooperative provides them. In the words of Hauwa Aminu, another member of Godiya Women: “Being in the cooperative makes me feel very secure and successful in business and in life.”

The poultry farming cooperatives also do very well. One group of 18 former program participants has formed an egg-production cooperative to supplement other incomes. Their chickens lay about 60 eggs a day. These sell for about fourteen cents an egg. That's about $128 a month in gross revenue. Subtract feed at $13 a bag each week and monthly rent of $22 a month, and that leaves $54 to be split 18 ways-- $3 for each women in the group. The group is pleased with this early income and only hope to see it increase as their cooperative grows.

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Sep 19, 2013
Meet Roseline Oluchi Ugwu

By Lyndsay Booth | Digital Engagement Officer

Roseline in front of her house.

Meet WfWI - Nigeria graduate Roseline Oluchi Ugwu. In addition to learning a vocational skill so they can start a small business, like a poultry farm, participants in WfWI's programs learn valuable business skills and recieve rights awareness training, so they can not only earn an income from their business, but use that income to help themselves and their families thrive.

Roseline Oluchi Ugwu is one of the participants of women for women program in Nrobo. She has one child (a girl) as well as two adopted boys.

Her father died while her mother was three months pregnant with her. She had 6 sibilings. She never went to school. The girls in the family did not attend school because her mother perceived education at that time as a waste of time and resources for females, but her brothers were allowed to attend school.

Roseling was not happy with a whole lot of things- giving birth to only one child, her husband leaving her for another woman and also the fact that she had no money and no work.

Enrolling in the WfWI program helped her see new opportunities. Training on "Understanding Financial Household Management, Household Savings, Goal Setting and Opportunities for Income Generation" motivated her to be serious with her business and she was able to find additional business opportunities like selling oranges, frying garri out of cassava, harvesting and selling of palm products that gave her an additional income.

She commended her facilitator on the way she treated the topic on "women's rights and law, women and household decision making as well as ownership and interhitance." She saved her sponsorship funds and other money from her daily and monthly income to be able to achieve her goal of building a house.

Roseline realized that women can own land and went to her husband’s people and requested a piece of land. Her request was granted; a piece of land was given to her and out of her savings and other money she borrowed started building a mud house of 3 bedrooms with veranda.

Says Roseline, "Women for women has made me proud, I am a changed person”.

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Jun 26, 2013
Meet Evelyn Ejike

By Lyndsay Booth | Online and Multimedia Coordinator

Evelyn with some of her chicks.

Meet Evelyn Ejike. Thirty-six years old, Evelyn is married and has 5 children.

Before she joined Women for Women International, she has a shop were she sells provisions. Her weekly income was N1000 which was not enough to take care for her family needs. In 2011 her landlord increased the shop rent to N25,000 per year. This maked it impossible to make ends meet. This happened at the same time her husband was jobless thereby leaving the burden of family upkeep on her shoulders.

A key turning point in her life came when she was enrolled in Women for Women program in 2011. Her esteem and confidence was greatly impacted by the information she received in the Life-skill training class. Business training exposed her to basics for successful management of small businesses. With the new knowledge about business, it was not difficult for her to do an evaluation of her present petty trading business. The discovery that her small business was not profitable motivated her to start thinking about other sources of generating income. She became interested in poultry production and she elected the poultry production tract for her vocational training at WfWI.

Guided by the information she received during training on financing a business, she and four other women organized themselves into a business group and approached their bank, Ifeanyichukwu Microfinance Bank for loan. Ifeanyichukwu Microfinance bank is the bank with which the women in Mgbowo opened individual bank accounts for sponsorship disbursement. Their application was granted.

With the help of her husband, she built a small poultry house capable of housing 100 birds from used and improvised building materials. Evelyn said she used the loan with the money she saved from the sponsorship fund to start poultry production in October 2012 and produced the first batch of birds. With the success she made in the first production, she paid her loan. After sales and payment of the loan, she booked and stocked another batch of 100 birds which are now in the second week of brooding. She plans to sell the birds when they are ready.

Evelyn hopes to expand to layers production when her production capital increases. The demand for poultry eggs is on the high side and she hopes to have a bigger farm that can accommodate at least 500 laying birds.

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