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Two remarkable young women born in one of the driest, poorest countries in the world are showing their families and their communities the way out of poverty. Ibtsam and Sabah live in the Dhamar Governorate of Yemen, where up to 70 per cent of the population in highland villages lives on less than two dollars a day.

Through a project supported by IFAD, both young women have acquired important new skills, enabling them to increase their incomes, earn the respect of their neighbours and take up positions of responsibility in their communities.

The Dhamar Participatory Rural Development Project started work in 2004 and has reached over 25,000 households so far. The project is working to help smallholder farmers and herders increase their production, their family’s food security and their incomes, and improve basic living conditions in the villages.

One of the project’s underlying goals is also to mobilize local community members, in particular women and young people, to take part in planning and implementing project activities. These include agricultural extension work, literacy training classes and rural finance groups. The mid-term review team that visited late in 2009 found that the project had successfully mobilized poor rural people in more than 130 communities.

Women’s work

As in many poor places around the world, women in Dhamar have the odds stacked against them. Their daily responsibilities are onerous. They fetch water, collect wood, prepare food, tend the fields, care for children and look after grazing animals. But the majority have not been taught to read and write, their participation in social and civic affairs is restricted, and they have limited ownership of land or property.

One of the project’s greatest successes so far has been in teaching young and adult women to read and write and enabling them to manage their money. More than 6,500 women have completed elementary literacy training and nearly 3,000 have started their second year.

Building on this achievement, 140 savings and credit groups have been set up, the vast majority of which are women’s groups created by women from the literacy classes.

Sharing skills and earning respect

Ibtsam (centre) with her mother (left) and younger sister

Ibtsam is 19 and has a high school diploma. She lives in Talhamah Village, Jaharan District. She is spontaneous and ambitious, and her parents fully support her dream of obtaining a higher education and becoming an English interpreter. She has eight brothers and sisters. Her father owns a small grocery shop in the village and is a smallholder farmer. Like most rural Yemeni girls, Ibtsam grew up grazing animals, helping her father on the farm and doing her homework in her spare time.

Today, Ibtsam teaches reading and writing to other women in her community, and her mother is one of her students. She first learned about the Dhamar project when a literacy officer visited the village and shortlisted her and other candidates for the literacy-teacher training programme. She was selected on the basis of her education and natural communication skills. Her younger sister Hiyam, who is also a high-school graduate and teacher at the local school, looks after their siblings when both her mother and elder sister are busy in literacy classes.

Ibtsam also serves as the chairperson of the village savings and credit committee, which has 35 members.

“I now enjoy a different status in the family and in the village. I have gained more respect within my family and my community,” she says.

Ibtsam has developed striking business skills through training provided by the project. For example, she took out a loan of 40,000 Yemeni rial (about US$200) from the savings and credit association to expand her father’s shop. She has already paid back 33,000 rial, as well as the 10 per cent service charge. With this financial contribution, she has gained 50 per cent ownership of the shop. With her savings from allowances she received during the training programme, she bought and sold some sheep at a profit. She has also started a successful business selling gas cylinders in the community and has opened a small shoe shop from her village home.

Through her business activities, Ibtsam has already managed to lift her family out of poverty. Her family’s nutrition has improved significantly, with meat and other high-protein foods now part of the family’s diet. Family income has almost doubled, from 50,000 rial to nearly 100,000 a month.

Before learning about the project, Ibtsam was struggling to find a way to free herself and her family from dependency and poverty. When she heard the Chinese proverb “women hold half of the skies,” she immediately replied, “give me an opportunity and I’ll lift the whole world above my head.”

This is a remarkable statement from a young rural woman with her face completely hidden behind a veil, in a country where women are expected to be shy and reserved.

With the enthusiasm of youth, Ibtsam now says: “I would like to become as powerful as the Queen of Sheba. I would like to go abroad to complete my education, and I am prepared to pull away my veil should it become an obstacle in achieving my objective of becoming an English interpreter.”

Ibtsam’s message to her fellow countrywomen is that, in order to shake off the “dust of poverty,” they need to obtain an education. And they need to become members of savings and credit associations, to invest in their own simple businesses, and to become economically self-sufficient.

“This is just the beginning, not the end,” she says.

“I feel I am more empowered than ever before, and above all I can see the light at the end of the tunnel that my family and I have been living in for decades.”

Learning new skills and gaining confidence

Sabah is also 19 and lives in Jabal El Sharaq. She was selected for the Dhamar project’s veterinary skills development programme because she is qualified and competent. Every morning, Sabah works as a volunteer teacher in the local school, because she wants every girl and boy in her community to get an education. Every afternoon, she teaches literacy classes promoted by the project.

Sabah was not able to get a loan from the savings and credit association for the veterinary micro business she had started, because the association had limited capital. So instead she invested her savings from the allowances she received under the literacy training programme in her new business. Sabah cannot afford to buy a refrigerator, so she buys veterinary medicines when she needs them and does not keep a stock of medicines that require controlled climatic conditions.

Sabah at work with a herd of goats

Sabah now works with 22 villages. She spent the first few weeks visiting farmers and telling them about her veterinary business activity and the services she can offer. She travels on foot and makes light of the great distances.

“Walking several miles up and down hills on dusty and sometimes dangerous tracks to fetch water, tend grazing animals and farm terraces is practically a daily job for almost every girl and woman in this part of the world,” she says.

She knows that her most important achievement to date is gaining the confidence to speak to male farmers and herders without feeling intimidated. Her negotiation skills have improved to the extent that she has no problem setting the price of her veterinary visits. And she has learned to turn away farmers who haven’t paid for her assistance in the past.

Because of her skills and the respect she has earned in her community, like Ibtsam, Sabah has also become the manager of the local savings and credit association, which recently started operations and currently has 25 members.

Sabah’s family is proud of her determination and achievements and they support her ambitions. She has been relieved of household duties so she can focus on her goals. She aims to complete her education in agriculture and to set up a pharmacy so that local people will not have to travel far to get assistance. She wants to go abroad to complete her studies and learn from other cultures.

Sabah also wants to become a role model for rural Yemeni women. She has this message for women in her community and in nearby villages: “Learn and you will see the world from a different perspective. You will produce better generations, who will take proper care of this land whose natural resources are at the mercy of the climate. You will know your rights and how to set and achieve objectives.”
 

Source: IFAD