By Lyndsay Booth | Online and Multimedia Marketing Coordinator
Meet WfWI - DRC graduate Josephine. Learn how she has transformed her life, and the life of hundreds of women in her community, after participating in WfWI's year-long holistic training program, which includes learning basic numeracy and literacy skills, health education, rights awareness training, business skill training and vocational skills training in a specific vocational track.
When Josephine, the family breadwinner and mother of 8 girls, joined the Women for Women International program in the Democratic Republic of Congo, she was desperate to earn an income to feed her children. During the 12-month program, she learned about commercial farming and agriculture. When she graduated in July 2011, she began cultivating two plots of beans.
Using her newly acquired business skills, Josephine taught 200 women from her village how to cultivate beans. These 200 women organized themselves into groups of 25. They formed a coordinating body and elected Josephine as the president. They've engaged two teachers from the group as volunteers to teach basic literacy. This group uses their income to re-invest in their agricultural businesses, send their children to school and feed their families.
Josephine's dream is to have a small home and to continue to pass on her business savvy to women in the surrounding communities. Twice a week, she makes the long trek to the Women for Women International commercial farm to tend her plots. She walks, eight kilometers each way, to help make her dream a reality.
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