Walk In Her Shoes has officially launched at CARE! As CARE Canada’s signature campaign, participants challenge themselves with a personal or team walk and raise money to empower women and girls in the developing world.
On March 8th, join thousands of Canadians who will walk 8,000 steps for 8 days to simulate what a woman or girl experiences daily in the developing world.
Women and girls in developing countries are disproportionately affected by poverty and are often responsible for collecting water, firewood and other basic necessities.
Our Vice-President of International Programs, Evelyne Guindon, understands this very well. Recently, she sat down with Heather Barnabe, senior officer of ambassador relations and events, to explain how, when CARE empowers women to fight poverty, whole communities can be helped.
As someone who has seen the distance many women have to walk to collect water, can you tell us about a specific region you’ve visited?
I recently visited CARE programs in the Zaka District of Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. It’s an area prone to serious and chronic drought. I met with many inspiring women. Among the projects I visited was the Taruberekera Water Harvesting and Garden Project that lies 50km in the north eastern side of Jerera growth point. It seemed close enough on a map, but the road to this community was as treacherous and unforgiving as any road could be.
What kind of project was CARE implementing?
This project is trying to build resiliency for some of the world’s most vulnerable and hard to reach communities. In Taruberekera, CARE is working with communities to irrigate homestead gardens. In recent years, the watershed was at risk of drying up owing to poor agricultural practices and cutting of trees for firewood and construction. CARE helped sensitize the community about sustainably utilizing the resources within the catchment.
The project I saw is multi-facetted. It consists of community gardens and the construction of an amazing 1.5 metre weir to divert water through a 100m long earth canal. Buckets are used to irrigate the beds. Blair toilets and storage structures were also built. All the work was undertaken by community workers themselves in close collaboration with government partners.
Did that mean less walking or safer walking conditions for the women of the community?
This not only meant less walking for women. Water can now be reliably obtained within their community. It also meant the ability to grow healthy food for their families. In addition, the project has women take ownership of the water, the gardens and the long term sustainable development of their community. As key members of the Community Management committees established to run the garden they have a meaningful seat at the table and are trained as technicians and managers. They will help decide on the future of their community watershed and, as a result, women have a voice in a key resource and are leading their community.
What a wonderful story! Anything else you want to tell us about the project?
It was incredibly inspiring to see the pride that the women had in the Taruberekera project. They had developed technical and leadership skills in addition to benefitting from simple, sustainable technology that would improve their ability to feed their families a healthy and balanced diet. The garden I saw had harvested rape and cabbage, healthy leafy crops. It was also harvesting mealies, sugar beans, onions and butternut all at various growth stages.
Women who had faced many hardships caused by drought, who had many stories to tell about hunger, spoke of promise and hope for the future. CARE assisted with simple technology, community mobilization (ensuring women had that seat at the table) and helped provide a resource we all take for granted here in Canada. Water.
Learn more about how you can support women like those in the Taruberekera project — Walk in Her Shoes.
Stephen Cornish, director of bilateral projects for CARE Canada, recently visited a project in the West Bank that is designed to support the region’s traditional herding communities. We asked him about his visit and the challenges of providing assistance in the region.
