Economic opportunities

“It is crucial to put rural women’s needs and priorities at the centre of development efforts if hunger and poverty are to be eradicated,” said Phrang Roy, Assistant President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
More than 75 per cent of the world’s 1.1 billion extremely poor people live in rural areas of developing countries. The majority are women.
Speaking on the eve of International Women’s Day, Roy said IFAD prioritized the economic empowerment of women as one of the fundamentals for broad-based economic growth and poverty reduction. For this to be possible, women need secure access to productive resources such as land, water for agriculture and financial capital.
“We have learned through our experience in rural development projects and programmes that when women have secure access to these resources, and when they can take advantage of economic opportunities, they have great capacity to become powerful agents of change and social transformation,” Roy said. “They can transform their own lives and the lives of their families and communities.”
http://www.ifad.org/media/press/2005/23.htm

We couldn’t agree more and this is why we help fund income generating activities.
The RWDA encourages the formation of Income Generating Groups as they believe in the power of pulled, human as well as financial, resources. Over 40 groups are now members of the RWDA and involved in numerous income generating activities including handicrafts, hoteli operation, bee-keeping, chicken rearing and crop diversification. The RWDA monitors the group activities and works together with the groups to identify means of increasing output, quality, markets and cost effective means of increasing income.

Most activities are financed with microloans, giving the recipients the satisfaction of doing it for themselves whilst allowing us to finance many other projects as the funds get recycled.

But of course, the microloan base needs to be well established and time is pressing. So we need your help. Please make a donation today.