Championing Women
In the old patriarchal local culture, women are second-class citizens. Though they carry most of the burden of family farms, household chores and raising children, the men control the money made from selling their meagre crops. Typically husbands garnish the earnings of the odd women who do manage to make money outside the house. Sometimes they order women not to work out of fear of them gaining independence and disobeying them.
“There is a great need to gradually change these beliefs,” says Debora, our Women & Youth Organizer, “for men and woman to the see the benefits of a woman working and supporting her family.” The project is helping its 56 fulltime and 83 seasonal women workers to set up a Savings & Loan Cooperative and to launch micro-enterprises. These woman are setting an example to the rest of the villages. Women wearing trousers first met resistance but is becoming accepted!
Advances vs. Baseline Household Economics
In 2020/21, we did comprehensive surveys of 30% of the households in the first two project villages, Uluti and Mhanga, population 1,876, to establish a baseline from which to measure the project’s impact on their livelihoods and standard of living.
In 2024, we surveyed 44% of the same group, 61 households, 13% of the total 447 households in the villages and found:
As two new two villages enter the project, in 2025 we will survey Idunda, 343 households, and Kidete, 432 households.
To chart their climb out of extreme poverty, we will measure all four villages annually through 2051.
In a remote area where many families live on $13 per month, and cash employment is nearly non-existent, UCL has created 168 full-time jobs, and over 1,000 six-month seasonal jobs, covering housing, meals and medical for all, as well as over 30,000/year single task jobs. UCL pays better wages than the large commercial timber plantations in the region.
A man built a new house over two years by selling seeds to the project.