Virutal Town Hall Recording: Nurturing Opportunities for Women

On March 26th, OneVillage Partners held a virtual town hall hosted by the Nurturing Opportunities for Women (NOW) Team. In honor of Women's History Month, the NOW program team explained why a program like this was created, the importance of investing in women’s empowerment, the program’s impact on participants and their communities, and how we’re working with program graduates to develop the next phase of the program. Enjoy a story about a real participant and learning from the people who are in the communities day-in and day-out training the women of NOW. The full transscript of the recording can be found below.

Learn more about Nurturing Opportunities for Women at www.onevillagepartners/programs.

Transcript

FAS: Hello everyone, my name is Foday Alimu Sesay. I am the program manager for the NOW program. Thank you all for being here today, I am highly excited to see you guys! In 2016, about a year after piloting the Community Action program in three communities, OneVillage Partners recognized that for these communities to truly lead development inclusively, women needed to have an equal role in decision making in their homes and communities. Women in Sierra Leone, especially in rural areas, face many barriers to decision-making in both their personal lives and at the community level. In Sierra Leone, only 26% of women are literate, and in Kailahun District where we work, only 1% of women have completed secondary school. For that reason, we created NOW: Strengthening Household Finances, where women learn basic financial skills, public speaking, and decision-making, all while using accessible, picture-based tools, so the learning is understood regardless of literacy levels.  

In NOW: Strengthening Household Finances, women participants set their primary financial goals. For many women, their primary goal is to save enough money to send their children to school or to better manage their household finances. Once participants had the skills to achieve their individually set goals, many participants expressed interest in starting businesses. So OneVillage Partners listened to the program graduates and in 2018, we piloted NOW: Improving Income through Business Skills. Building off skills learned in NOW: Household Finances, in this second phase of NOW, participants learn basic business concepts and graduate with the tools and confidence to start their own businesses and/or improve existing ones.

Recently, program graduates began expressing interest in taking what they have learned in the first two phases of NOW to the next level. We’ll share more about the third phase of NOW in a moment!

BMM: Hello. My name is Bernadette Musu Mustapha. I am a NOW Program Officer, and I am going to talk about each of our programs in more detail. OneVillage Partners currently has two phases to the program. The first phase that participants take part in is NOW: Strengthening Household Finances. Participants in this phase attend weekly trainings for seven months with the goal to increase economic power of women in rural Sierra Leone.

Participants in NOW: Household Finances learn skills such as, goal setting, creating a budget, maintaining a savings fund, and communication skills. What’s special about the NOW program, is that at key points in the program, participants’ husbands or male family members attend sessions with the goal of shifting perspectives on rigid gender roles and create a supportive environment for the women.

To date, we have had over 450 women participate in NOW: Household Finances. Of those women, 93% have achieved their primary financial goal they set at the beginning of the program, and there was a 91% increase in women reporting speaking in public after the program ended. Meaning women who participate in the NOW program gain the confidence pursue their goals and use their voices.

Participants who graduate from NOW: Household Finances are invited to take part in NOW: Business Skills. Participants attend ten trainings using picture-based workbooks and tools to learn the necessary skills to develop and expand a small business. They learn how to calculate profit and increase profit and gain communication skills to confidently communicate their business ideas to others.

Since 2018, 225 women have participated in NOW: Business Skills. 91% of women understand how to increase profit, 83% understand how to do a market survey, and 95% of participants revealed having increased decision-making power for major household purchases. The women are more effectively participating in and contributing to their local economies and taking ownership of their lives.

HT: Hello everyone. My name is Hameeda Turday. I’m here to share a story of a participant. Hawa Saffa is a- 45 -year old business woman and a NOW participant. She is a widow with five children who lives in Ngolahun with her family. Before the NOW program in Ngolahun, Hawa lacked knowledge in savings and budgeting and household financial management.  She was not able to calculate her business finances because she did not understand the symbols for money. She did not know how to manage business finances so as such, she found it difficult to calculate her business expenses, income and profit. Hawa mainly depended on taking loans from individuals to solve major financial problems like her children’s education, family health care and food to feed the children. At the end of harvesting season, after paying her loans, the family would go back to a ‘zero position’ with no finance to upkeep them.

During Hawa’s participation in the NOW program, two main activities inspired her to take a new direction in her life. In NOW: Household Finances, the progress chart taught her to do savings and budgeting.  In NOW: Business Skills, she learned the importance of saving in different places and locations. At first, Hawa as a single parent found it challenging to save because of her low income. However, Hawa was motivated by a session in NOW: Business Skills which clearly explained about expenses, income, profit, then business savings and household savings.

Hawa started doing savings in three different places and with different purposes for each: Business savings for the expansion of her business, household savings for future investments, and saving for emergencies. Every day, Hawa saved five thousand Leones, in her business savings, three thousand Leones for household savings, and ten thousand Leones in the village savings group. In total, she was saving the equivalent of one dollar and 75 cents every day.

As Hawa’s knowledge began to grow, she realized that some of her friends were keen to understand the knowledge that she gained in the program. She extended the NOW learning to a friend and taught her about savings. The learning has helped her friend to start a small business of her own.

Hawa’s increased knowledge in savings helped change her own situation and even transform a friend’s life. Hawa can now save, manage her finances and make good business decisions. Hawa said “my saving habits have helped me solve my family problems including my children’s welfare. I now acknowledge the importance of saving”.

Hawa is now has a successful business selling porridge in the community. She is a woman with a wealth of knowledge in business and financial management skills. As such, Hawa is now a role model for other women to follow.

FAS: This year, 4 communities are currently participating in NOW: Strengthening Household Finances and 4 communities will begin NOW Business Skills later this year, with 240 total women participating in the program in 2021. Anticipated outcomes for the year - we are expecting at the end of the year participants will be able to set clear goals and be able to meet those goals that they have set. They will also be able to have clear business skills and be able to increase their business income that they are setting in NOW phase 2

As I hinted before, we are very excited to announce that we are planning a third phase to the program! We have discussed with past participants what skills they would like to learn and develop, and with their input and feedback, we have begun planning. What we heard overwhelmingly from the NOW graduates was that they wanted learning, tools, and skills to start agricultural businesses. The majority of people, including women, in our partner communities are small-scale farmers. Now that the NOW graduates are confident in financial management and basic business skills, they feel they can best apply these skills to growing agriculture business and effectively increasing their incomes. We are currently working on with the developing the budget for technical training for these women so that they can have increased productivity and income at the end of their project.