TDA in Thriving communities through women's economic empowerment
TDA in collaboration with Tearfund Ireland implementing Thriving communities through women's economic empowerment, improved climate resilient livelihoods and the engagement of Civil Society Organizations project by aiming thriving communities through women's economic empowerment, improved climate resilient livelihoods and the engagement of Civil Society Organizations with main focus to SHGs and farmers’ groups.
Major outcomes of the project:
- Vulnerable women and households are economically empowered to build resilient livelihoods and sustainable household economies.
- Civil Society Organizations (CSO: SHGs, CLAs, FLAs, NGOs, churches) are enabled and have the capacity to engage in dialogues and/or lobby for their rights and the rights of the poor and vulnerable.
- Local churches enabled to mobilize their own resources to engage in identifying and meeting the needs of those who are vulnerable within their community.
The fundamental reason all of the initiatives carried out by Terepeza Development Association are successful is that SHG, Conservation Agriculture (CA), and CCT are not carried out separately rather are coordinated instead.
Therefore, the following are some of achievements via the mentioned project in short.
SHG progress
- Total working capital of 826 SHGs reached ETB 9,717,535.25
- saving of new SHG ETB 184,848.00
- Loan disbursed only in the past 6 months ETB 2,324,600
CLA (Cluster Level Association) progress
As well known CLA is a sustainable and innovative model for women socio-economic inclusion in any TDA development approach because CLA performs as a sustainable micro-finance service provider in a transparent way and established different committees to manage any members’ compliant loan revolving fund.
In addition, CLA contributed to scale up SHG model by mentoring and training above 15 SHG including 20 - 25 women returnees and it gained influence and recognition in the community, advocating for improved access to basic services in the urban project implementing areas for poor women access to formal micro-finance services.
So far, giving technical support for 41 CLAs have 5,369,733.25 working capital which is usually meant for loan and they earned 92,000 ETB from interest and providing loan for SHGs with fair interest rate (5-10%) 894,660 Birr was given as loan in the past months of 2023 budget year.
Conservation Agriculture progress
- Currently 6,179 farmers practicing conservation agriculture, of which 1,656 are new and 4,523 are experienced.
- 90% of 1656 i.e. 1480 farmers who were trained on basic CA concepts, Post-harvest management, dry mulch, Cover crops are applying CA
- 43% (711) of the newly joined farmers are women
- Conservation Agriculture proved to be friendly approach to all in the household, old and young women are actively taking part in improving the livelihoods of the family securing their food needs with the dual functions of cover crops like pumpkin
As proved in the implementation this project, old and young women are actively participating in enhancing the family's livelihood by securing their food needs with the dual uses of cover crops like pumpkin, to be a welcoming strategy for everyone in the household.
What we learned:
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- Root crops with CA becoming popular among our farmers
- CA farmer keeping taro for consumption and selling for better prices
- CA has helped farmers to bring back the disappearing crop varieties
- 90 SHG members were trained on SOA concept, compost preparation, kitchen gardening, seedbed, sack mound
- Growing beetroots, carrot, Swiss chard, cabbage and onion.
Serving the whole person!