By Heran Abebe | Senior Gender Advisor
Pathfinder International and the Addis Ababa Women’s Association
GlobalGiving Progress Report
Income-Generating Activities for Ethiopian Women Project
September- November 2013
BACKGROUND
Pathfinder International and its partner, the Addis Ababa Women’s Association, received funding from generous GlobalGiving donors to support low-income women to engage in income-generating activities (IGAs) and to empower them to become self-sufficient and productive. With the generous support of these donors, 97 low-income Ethiopian women have started their own business. Each woman was provided with business skills training in addition to reproductive health information. Beneficiaries are engaged in various types of businesses including poultry, small-scale restaurants, vegetable gardening, petty trade, animal fattening and dry foods preparation. Testimonials from beneficiaries demonstrated that GlobalGiving support continues to bring about positive change in the lives of these women and their families by providing household food security, the ability to send their children to school, personal satisfaction, and control over their own income.
UPDATE
Local Woreda Ceremony
During this reporting period, the project focused on strengthening our existing and established IGA groups. In a recent local ceremony, the project transferred seed money (1,500 Birr) to 15 beneficiaries of an IGA group recruited this past summer. The ceremony was hosted by the woreda (district) administration, with woreda high officials present. The contributions of the GlobalGiving donors were acknowledged and beneficiaries praised their generosity, which came about during an especially challenging time in these women’s lives. As our donors may recall, one of our IGA groups, a small dry foods preparation business, suffered a setback when a fire broke out in their goods storehouse in May 2013. This new seed money will once again economically empower these women to re-establish and rehabilitate their business. The women are doing their best to revive their work and regain their previous customers. However, they still lack equipment like a refrigerator and electrical cooking materials. This has slowed down the pace of their recovery, but the beneficiaries are feeling the gracious support of the GlobalGiving donors and their woreda community.
Visits made by International Conference on Family Planning Participants
The International Conference on Family Planning was recently held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on November 12-15, 2013. This global conference gathers family planning advocates, government officials, Ministries of Health, and NGOs from across the world that have a vested interest in women and their health. Among the many pre-conference activities was a visit to the Addis Ababa Women’s Association, its partners and grassroots network. Conference participants visited the GlobalGiving and Pathfinder projects, including the IGA project. . Fruitful discussions were held about the project and the support of GlobalGiving donors led to talk of opportunities for new future funding. The visit paved the way for the Association to promote its work and for the beneficiaries to have interactions with these stakeholders from the international family planning community.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
