Development projects -> Woman empowerment

Suglo Ngibi Bini Woman Association

Background

CID-Ghana has for several years been involved in the neighbor communities Kukuo Yepalsi and Tempe Kukuo through the nursery school and early childhood development centre. To further support the development of the communities CID realized that the women needed more attention. Many of them had few possibilities of supporting their families and small impact on their children’s schooling.
CID-Ghana carried through a research in the both communities to find a sustainable solution to the problems and realised that the women needed skill training and initial capital to start with trading.
CID designed a project where the women will be taught in the making of batik cloths and trained in developing an association and financial activities. They will also obtain a micro credit loan to start up the business. When the loans are paid back the goal is to pass them on to other women of the community.
The focus of this project is on empowering women economically and socially.



After presenting the proposal to several organizations CID-Ghana had a positive response from the St. Anthony foundation in the Netherlands and the project could start in February 2007.

Progress

20 women were selected and initial meetings were held to develop a constitution for the association and start the capacity building.
The women agreed on the name Suglo Ngbibi Bini which means "Patience move mountains".

The project that is benefiting a women group of 20 members in the Kukuo-Yapalsi and Tampe-Kukuo communities has seen its first cycle end June 2008. At this point, the key element of the project is an evaluation of the impact and results of the project as per its aim.
In two meetings with the woman group and some members of the community, they proudly present beautiful batik fabrics that the women has produced and say they are proud that it is made in their community. The project has been successful in that these women have acquired an additional source of livelihood through skills training in batik. In addition it have had good response in terms of loan repayment even though not all has been repaid. The ones who have not repaid will make an outright payment at the end of July 2008. The demonstrated ability of the women to pay back the loans suggests that they have benefited from the micro credit. According to the women, for every GH¢3 invested, a profit of GH¢1 is realized (that is 1/3 of the invested capital).

Nonetheless, there are some problems in marketing their batik especially in the lean season where people will rather not spend money on cloths but food. CID-Ghana is exploring new ways of enhancing market for the association. Two meetings have been held with the women to discuss the issue and find possible solutions to the market problem of their batik. And as a content woman expressed it: "even if I cannot sell my products now, I am wearing what I have produced and have saved what I would have used to buy a cloth".