A few weeks back, on March 8, the world celebrated International Women’s Day. I celebrated as well. But for me, every day is International Women’s Day…because I have the daily honor and privilege of celebrating the accomplishments and achievements of women from around the world. These women are alumnae of Plan International USA’s WomenLead Institute. They work on the front lines of development, implementing programs for women who have been marginalized, abandoned, stigmatized, or forgotten by their families, communities, and governments. Most of these women never have the time to celebrate their work—they are too busy doing what needs to be done. In honor of all such women, I would like to celebrate two—Faith from Nigeria and Patricia from the Ivory Coast—who are working to advance women’s economic empowerment.
True to her name, Faith is a living example of what can be accomplished with a small amount of money and large amounts of passion and determination. Faith lives and works in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria, a place she describes as a haven for harmful cultural practices, including property grabbing from widows. While practices vary, it is not uncommon for a widow to have all of her family’s belongings taken by her husband’s family the moment he dies, leaving her and her children rejected, abandoned, and often in abject poverty.
Through her organization, Faduk Care Foundation, Faith provides widows and other vulnerable women with income generation, literacy, and business development skills, helping them to escape the cycle of violence and poverty. Through a partnership with Gufax Micro-finance Bank Ltd., Faith also helps women access micro-credit and training in modern agricultural techniques and technologies.
In 2016, Faith competed for and secured a grant of less than $6,000 from Plan to train rural widows in the art and science of raising chickens. The women were trained to use innovative farming techniques to ensure healthier and heftier poultry, and learned how to start and manage a business and develop business relationships. Visits to modern poultry farms exposed the women to experts and technologies that informed their micro-businesses.
Market research showed the new chicken farmers that price and demand would soar during the Christmas holidays. So, they took the initiative and decided to delay their sales until the Christmas holidays, despite the end of the grant a month earlier. The waiting paid off—the women sold more than 350 chickens to fast food operators and restaurant owners, increased their income by 20 percent, and cheered the prospects of sustained incomes and food security for their families. They happily reported that their business success and increased confidence also led to greater decision-making roles both within and outside of their homes. Equally important, Faith and her organization have a successful model to replicate and scale to reach more women.
Patricia has the same passion as Faith for improving the lives of women in rural communities, but she makes her impact through technology. Patricia is an entrepreneur in the Ivory Coast who has developed mobile apps that help women save both time and money. Her first business, Quickcash, an affordable and equitable mobile banking platform, was extremely successful. However, Patricia soon realized that only a fraction of her customers and distributors were women. Knowing all too well the challenges faced by rural women, Patricia decided to regroup and focus her innovations on women.
Soon after returning home from a Plan workshop, Patricia launched Bank’Her, which digitized savings groups for rural women. She has since formalized agreements with local banks and mobile service providers to implement the mobile savings app and make saving easier, safer, and more convenient for women. Along with her team, Patricia traveled to meet women farmers in the most remote areas of the country to demonstrate the app and explain its benefits and use. Women no longer had to carry cash long distances or worry that a husband or relative would help themselves to her profits at home. A quick visit to the local agent and voila, their earnings were safe.
Bank’Her was successful, but Patricia’s entrepreneurial spirit persisted. Having grown up on a farm, she wanted to share her passion for agriculture, business, and women’s empowerment by transforming small-scale women farmers into rural entrepreneurs. The result was Feed Africa. After persuading village leaders to provide free access to land for rural women, Patricia’s latest innovation introduced simple, effective irrigation and solar energy technologies to maximize efficiency and production and ensure that women farmers were no longer exploited by distributors.
Patricia has captured her vision with one of my favorite quotes: “I dream every day in color. My dream is to see women farmers with machines to help them have better harvests and that their children can go to school, instead of helping to plant and harvest. My dream is to see the rural area transform and to see the people in these areas have access to financial services.” If anyone can turn these dreams into reality, it is Patricia.
Both Faith and Patricia are two examples of women achieving their dreams…and I know from more than 30 years of working directly with women leaders around the world, that there are many more doing the same thing. For this reason, women should be celebrated every day of the year.
