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As the country continues to experience drought and failed harvests since 2000 due to climate change and the impact of COVID-19, the Zimbabwe Parents of Handicapped Children Association (ZPHCA) is building the resilience of grassroots women to withstand shocks brought about by these challenges.
“The country has been experiencing drought and failed harvest since the year 2000 resulting in severe food insecurity, hunger, malnutrition, and deprivation. Women and girls living in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas are the most risk group since their livelihoods are primarily dependent on agriculture.
“Grassroots women have endured the loss of income. They travel long distances in search of water and broadly lost employment across the agricultural value chain,” said Theresa Makwara, the ZPHCA National Coordinator.
ZPHCA invented the Climate Change Resilience Building Model for the purpose of influencing the initiation of the movement. The ZPHCA Movement was established in 2008 and had grown solidly over the years from 60 members to 420 members to date. The movement has been harnessing the collective voices of grassroots women affected by climate change and engaging stakeholders in their quest to find lasting practical home-grown and women-centred solutions.
ZPHCA handed over additional peanut butter-making machines to Mbvuku, Seke, and Hopley.
“These groups will be involved in peanut butter making. Other groups will be involved in poultry projects where we will start with 50 broilers per group. Our peanut butter will be branded.
“We will also teach our women project/business management, record-keeping, bookkeeping, marketing, and product distribution,” said Nyasha Makiwa, the ZPHCA social worker.
In Hopley, the women run a savings and credit cooperative. At the end of the cycle, each member received at least US$100 and the pay up could go up to US$150.
The St. Mary’s group is also involved in food processing with customers resorting to buying tomato or masawu jam.
Makwara expressed her gratitude to Huairou Commission for sponsoring the grassroots women resilience-building project in Zimbabwe towards improving food sustainability among ZPHCA members.
ZPHCA grassroots women as part of being innovative and creative have managed to invent the processing of Baobab indigenous fruit into and an anti-toxic energy drink. Grassroots women are now packaging the Muuyu Energy Drink in 500ml branded bottles and selling locally and nationally. The Drink can be refrigerated as part of preservation. Baobab fruits are readily available in all the drought-prone districts of Zimbabwe. Traditionally Baobab fruits cure several diseases in Zimbabwe including headache, running stomach, and breathing difficulties hence the newly invented Energy Drink is receiving a good market share.
The local communities are also benefitting from the improved food variety sources and skills acquired through implementing the projects.
She called upon local stakeholders and the government to complement the available resources so that the resilience-building movement can continue to grow.
There are a number of barriers faced by women in implementing resilience-building livelihood projects.
Elizabeth Chidi, a ZPHCA member bemoaned the entrepreneurship skills gap that exists amongst grassroots women. She also alluded to the lack of information on climate change adaptation and resilience-building amongst grassroots women.
“Recently, there has been an increase in the severity of disasters like climate change, typhoid, cholera, and the COVID-19 pandemic. As women, we also lack access, control, and ownership of locally-driven resources such as land, water, and forestry resources.
“We also decry poor pricing and high competition for resilience building livelihood products at local and national markets. We also lack storage, refrigeration, processing, and value addition for the resilience building products,” Chidi said.
Of concern is the marginalisation of grassroots women in decision-making, policymaking, and budget formulation processes, a situation that leads to gender-biased policies and programmes.
The women are calling on stakeholders to set aside resilience-building budgets to ensure sustainability.
“There is a need for innovative grassroots women skills development programmes for the purpose of broadening lifetime opportunities for women. We also need information centres to ensure the dissemination of early warning systems, data collection, and the gathering of success stories.
“It’s important to ensure inclusion of grassroots women in disaster management response teams and other related decision-making platforms to ensure that grassroots women resilience-building priorities are taken on board,” Makwara added.