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25 Vulnerable women and their children
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Because of severe health or marital (infidelity or polygamy) problems, many women in Africa are left to take care of their children or grandchildren without the skills or resources necessary to live struggle free. Keeping their children in school, eating more than 1 meal a day while providing basic shelter, health and clothing becomes, most of the times, an impossible task.
With 165 dollars I made 25 packages that will help widowed and poor mothers improve their nutritional, income, sanitation and health conditions.
Each package has:
- 1 Mosquito net – To prevent sickness or death by malaria to their family members or themselves.
- 5 kind of seeds (onion, 3 types of cabbage and lettuce) – To improve the family nutrition intake and to provide another source of income generating activities.
- 1 Soap Bar – To promote hygiene and because, after working in the canteens, I have seen that Mozambican low income families like and need to receive soap.
I bought in big packages to then carefully divide in 125 smaller packages. I intentionally bought a kind of cabbage (Couve Estaca)that lasts for several seasons and that is usually too expensive for people to buy.
To thank 2 neighborhood leaders for working with me, I gave them each 2 bars of soap.
Some women also got more than one bar.
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I had 3 approaches when choosing which women to help:
6 women where chosen with the help of 2 other volunteers that where making a micro credit group with 6. These where active and responsible women.
With the help of a local man, I gave 5 packages to women he knew and seen they needed help.
I asked 2 local neighborhood leaders to give me permission and introduce me to 14 women in their area that they knew they where vulnerable and where either widows or extremely poor.
Even at a tiny scale, I can now understand how hard it is for NGOs and charities to distribute resources. Not only because choosing the right product to distribute is challenging, but because choosing the right beneficiaries is complicated. Sometimes, there is no time, possibilities or resources to get to know each beneficiary deeply. Also the distribution itself requires much logistics, organization and can involve long distances and time. Furthermore, as it happened to me, the people who are helping distribute or choose the beneficiaries may want to get the packages for themselves even if they do not fit the beneficiary criteria.
As a result, even if this action was outside of my ADPP project, I helped me learn a lot about development initiatives and product distribution at a very practical level.
Each package cost about 6.6 dollars. With the $450 I could have given 68 women a package. However, I choose to help in another vital aspect of development, EDUCATION.
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2 promising young adults
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Joao Petera
To help a colleague of my project "Cantina de Soja" I sponsored half of his nursing school tuition.
Joao Petera dreamt to be a doctor yet his dream has not been possible to attain. A son of a family of 3 offsprings, he lost his father at age 3. Now at age 27, he works to get his brother thru college after an international program ended his 4 year scholarship in his 2nd year. In the last years, he has done many different project, most of them are community oriented.
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To secure his entry to a government program in a boarding school that specializes in training nurses for 2 or 3 years, needs to pay $336. With part of the donations, I sponsored half of his tuition and helped buy the books required for him to study and pass the entry exams, with $182.
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Joao is a supervisor in my project. He trains and assists volunteers in 6 canteens in the areas of book keeping, group management, food distribution, orphan care, hygiene and many others.
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Damiao Petera
While working with Joao for 6 months, I got to know his brother Damiao. As Joao struggled to pay some university fees while paying university related loans and helping his mother with her expenses and high blood pressure condition; I collaborated a bit in his education as well. The collaboration was of $56.
Damiao studies French in the capital Maputo and will finish his studies this December 2010 at age 24. After, as agreed before, in return he will now help his brother get an education and will help support his mother.
As in any countries, with a college degree he now has an opportunity of getting a much better paid job and, hopefully, he get a great job soon!
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As you probably have gathered by now, a dollar can go a long way here in Mozambique.
The following chart shows the costs of each action in the local currency Meticais (MZN) and in USD.
Taking money at the ATM and Paypal had fees and transaction limits that where not so welcomed.
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I thank deeply to the persons who wanted to help people in Africa and donated and trusted me the money to do so.
I really enjoyed working in Africa and doing/learning/practicing development. I believe in future years I will return to Africa and do more!
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