You’re all amazing! Our target has already been reached and all matchfunding used up – in less than 24 hours!! All additional donations will be used to extend this wonderful project further, benefitting more women and their children. Please continue to give.

Growing wealth (and health) with water

Impoverished Ethiopian women who created a farming collective to grow vegetables have inspired our 2024 Christmas Appeal.

The women included members of a self-help group funded by Global Care, which encouraged them to start small businesses. Initially they sold vegetables purchased from a wholesaler.

They soon realised they’d make more profit if they grew their own crops, so they pooled their profits to rent a piece of land. Then they made a decision which really sent their business soaring, clubbing together to dig a well and install a pump, to irrigate the land.

Not only was a single harvest more bountiful, but they could multiply the number of harvests they got from their land, hugely increasing their income. They haven’t looked back!

4 Ethiopian women farms bend down as they work in their fields. They are smiling cheerfully. In the foreground, water can be seen flowing alongside their crops in an irrigation system.This Christmas we want to build on this group’s experience, by delivering five more wells, serving a further 50 impoverished women farmers and their families – around 250 people. The group have shown that with a reliable source of irrigation, farming families can double and even triple the number of harvests they can glean from their land. This hugely increases their income potential, as well as ensuring a generous supply of fresh food for their families.

This is transformational in the lives of families who previously lived hand-to-mouth, season to season, dependent upon increasingly erratic rainfall to grow crops essential to their survival. With access to a stable water source, everything changes.

Our partners say underground water sources are in plentiful supply in this region of Ethiopia. It’s just that very few families can afford to take advantage of them.
Families in poverty just don’t have the funds needed to dig a well which reaches deep enough, or purchase and run a pump.

“They toil in vain,” say our partners, “because they are not in a position to use the resource with which they are endowed.”

Extending the work

Through the Big Give Christmas Challenge (3-10 Dec) we have already raised £40,000 to deliver five new wells, for five collectives of ten women farmers. Thank you to all the donors who gave so quickly and so generously. 

But we don’t want to stop there! 

Any additional funds raised will simply mean we can help more women and more children. We can identify and train more collectives of women, deliver more wells, and create more generous harvests.

Please give generously to bless impoverished Ethiopian communities with tools to help build a sustainable future free from poverty.

Regular meals, consistent education and better health for children

Head of Operations Steve Wicking met these inspiring women in Koshe earlier this year:

“This has been a really exciting project. We’ve seen incredible success where women have had the opportunity to work together to build a better future for themselves and their families. This group are collaborating to grow crops including tomatoes, onions, bananas, wheat, maize and cabbage, which they sell in local markets. Access to ground water has tripled the annual yield and freed them from the risk of exploitation by middlemen at the wholesale market.
Five Ethiopian women stand proudly in front of a rough well wall. One is holding some crops and grinning at the camera. Another has a young child tied on her back.“In light of this success, our partners were keen to extend this opportunity to women in other local communities. By providing them with the infrastructure and training needed to successfully grow and sell produce together, they are giving the women the tools they need to achieve financial security – and financial security means regular meals, consistent education and better health for their children.”

 

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