Jenny Beechey, one of Tearfund’s International Partnership Managers, recently visited Mozambique, where she saw how our partners are working for inclusion and access for people who might otherwise be on the margins, and encouraging changed mindsets to help more people flourish.
I am in Nairobi to meet with some of the team that works in Somalia. They are working hard to make sure the clinics they support are friendly and accessible for women – that means making sure that women feel safe there and can often be seen by a woman. They are also trying to work out how to make sure the disabled women who need health care can come: a difficult task when disabled people are often hidden away by their families. The team also tell me about some work they are doing with “child friendly spaces” attached to the clinics. These are part play space, part education space. They are working to improve the support for under fives with some skills for parents to play with and interact with their children, and a curriculum that includes basic life skills for the many school age children who are not getting any other education.
Now in Mozambique, I visited with a community development committee (CDC) set up by our partner Oasis. This was a great group of men and women who are keen to support the project and the groups it has set up for savings, health, rights and literacy. We talked about what their community was like, and what it was like to be poor or very poor in their community. They explained that poor people don’t have a good house, won’t get three meals every day, kids may or may not be going to school, they can get basic health care but can’t afford anything more, are subsistence farmers and don’t have regular jobs. Very poor people might go for a couple of days without eating and need to beg for help. Their life is very uncertain and they have no education. Vulnerable groups such as widows, disabled people or child-headed households were more likely to be “very poor”.
When we talked about who was part of the project and benefiting from it. About half of the participants are from the “poor” group, which is great, because about half of the community are “poor”. But the “very poor” group represented about 25 per cent of their communities, and only five per cent of the project participants. Why were they left behind? We discussed that the project is open to everyone and that no one is forced, which is great. But we also discussed that many people who are in the “very poor” group have internalised their status in life, and even if someone says they are welcome they may still assume the project is not for them. The discussion was eye-opening for the CDC, and they went away thinking about how they could better support and encourage the people in their neighbourhoods who need support the most, but might be left out.
Today I had a discussion with the project team about the women they work with in the project and the kinds of barriers they experience. Women experience barriers related to a lack of opportunities, but there are also barriers in people’s heads: ideas they hold about what women can and can’t do, or should or shouldn’t do. Once women know about better health, for example, they may still have no power to make household spending decisions that would enable them to pay for health care. Cultural norms discourage women from pursuing economic opportunities and even if they make some money, men may still have the final say about how it’s spent. The work Oasis is doing with men is important because it is helping them change their minds about what women can and should be able to do, supporting work with women to save and start income generating opportunities. It’s also making for much happier men!
The work Oasis is doing with men is important because it is helping them change their minds about what women can and should be able to do, supporting work with women to save and start income generating opportunities.
I visited Gaza Works today to say goodbye. Gaza Works helped set up a dozen farms that are operated on a semi-commercial basis by farmers’ associations made up of local women. But the team originally started out running a nutrition and child survival project. They found that all the training and information in the world was no good to women who could not afford or access healthy food for their children.
The last decade or so has seen the growth of economic opportunities for the (mostly) women involved in the farms, with houses built, assets purchased and children educated. It has also made a much wider range of fruit and veggies available to families and communities in areas where beforehand there had been very limited options.
The roads are bad, and we left early and arrived back late; our last visit took place in the dark. Our partner Rede Christa has its field office in a district centre (a small town) and the communities they work with are spread out and sometimes hard to reach. The team is working in health and livelihoods using an approach to mobilise churches and the wider community to work together to problem-solve local issues. It’s hard, slow work, especially when it can take most of the day to get to and from some of the communities that are participating in the project. But they are committed to seeking out and working with the most marginalised communities, not just working in areas where it’s easy to show an impact.
[Rede Christa] are committed to seeking out and working with the most marginalised communities, not just working in areas where it’s easy to show an impact.
Home now. I am tired from the many long flights, but I have a day to rest before it’s back to reports and emails and meetings in the office. I thank God every time I remember all those partner teams and communities.
In the words of Paul: “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus … And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:3-6 and 9-11)
May the prayer points below, and what you’ve read in Jenny’s journal, fuel your prayers for our partners in Mozambique and the communities they’re working with.
Related projects have received support from the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).
