Success Story About Women Economic Empowerment

My name is AlmazGemechu, 28. I was born and grow in BenishangulGumuz Region, Metekel Zone Dibateworeda. I had no chance to attend school as my parents were not aware on the importance of education. On the other hand there was not access to school in our locality. Anyone who wants to attend school must leave his parents and go to other urban cities. That was even possible when he/she is lucky that he/she had relatives there and parents are fully aware and support their kids to attend education. At the age of 15 I got married. I always remember the pain and problems I had during that time. After a year I had gave birth to my first child. All household and economic burdens were on me. My husband was not supportive to me. He constantly beat me when he came drunk. My life was miserable. We got divorced after some years and the entire burden to support and educate my children becomes challenging. I had no skills and knowledge to lead my life. MISE had come to our woread and they select poor, marginalized and female headed households to their program. I was selected as one target of the project. I had attended a lot of training on entrepreneurship, saving, credit, book keeping and market assessment. After the series of trainings, we had two options to work alone or to be organized in cooperatives. I had organized under a sheep fattening and raring cooperative with other 10 women. We have a regular saving of 60 birr per month. There is also volunteer saving of members more than the amount. We have managed to save birr 5,800 in the account of our cooperative. We have also got a matching fund from the organization and installed to our account. We had never seen such an opportunity for our women. At this time my saving habit is improved. I can easily get access to credit from my cooperative without any collateral so that I can do any feasible business. As a result of this I have owned seven sheep. Without any problem I am leading my life well and my children are happy to attend their schooling.  We have a regular meeting among our members. We discuss on most of our issues. Beyond this I participate in the community conversation sessions which are organized every 15 days in our village. I had no knowledge and awareness on the harmful traditional practices on women and children health. Now I am fully aware on the problems, solutions and negative impacts on the wellbeing of women and children. On the other hand, I had got enough knowledge and skills on family planning, sanitation & hygiene and home management. To sustain this we had drafted, agreed up on it and ratified our community bylaw in this regard. I hope if the project continues and expand to other unreached localities it will benefit more poor women like me. For all the supports I would like to thank you!