4. Please share any relevant case studies about empowering women and youth in agriculture to achieve better food security.
While working with P4P, one of the most inspiring women I've met was Mazouma Sanou, a farmer from Burkina Faso. She spoke about her experience at P4P's 2014 Annual Consultation.
Mazouma is married and the mother of three children. She's a member of a P4P-supported cooperative union called UPPA-Houet, which has 20,500 members, 11,000 of whom are women. Mazouma contributes maize, sorghum, and niébé (cowpeas) to her union’s sales to WFP.
Mazouma also works as a field monitor paid by WFP and OXFAM to coach 25 rural women’s groups affiliated to her union, assisting them to produce and earn more. She works as an intermediary between groups and partners, and assists women to better organize their groups. She also supports them throughout the production process, making sure their products meet standards and working with them to improve their marketing and gain access to credit.
Mazouma says that since their involvement in P4P, many women are able to make family decisions in collaboration with their husbands. She states that this has made income management easier, allowing families to plan for the possibility of unexpected illness, and to set aside money for enrolling their children in school.
“Women have to help educate their husbands. Dialogue can certainly change attitudes, but you can’t command people to do things,” she says. “I ask the woman ‘if you get that money, what will you do,’ and she says ‘help the children,’ so I say ‘your husband can take another wife but your children can’t have another mother. Your children can really benefit from this.’”
When asked about the future of her cooperative, Mazouma says, “from the very start P4P has been a school where we have learned how to improve our work, how to improve quality. I think we need more training, so women can help women train each other and develop their work.”
“If you help a man you help one family, if you help a woman you help the country.”
(Read more about Mazouma in this interview)
Г-жа Chelsea Graham