Interact Winter 2009
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interactWinter 2009 The magazine of miracle workers contents agenda Our actions must speak as loud Cover: Gladys Gogwe (53), a as our words, writes Progressio’s small-scale farmer in southern Executive Director Christine Allen Malawi, who has been growing Jatropha, Neem and Moringa trees to boost her interact income and conserve and enrich the soil. See page 4 for miracle workers the full story. Photo: Marcus Perkins/ The Progressio people who went to Copenhagen for the Progressio winter 2009 • climate change summit were not the rich and powerful in the traditional sense. But our delegation included 4 insight representatives from our partner organisations, who bring miracle workers a wealth of experience of the reality of living vulnerable to climate and weather changes. The delegation therefore 8 action represented powerful voices – the voices of those who are climate change poor and marginalised around the world, but nevertheless powerful because they speak of truth, from experience. 10 voices rights and freedoms The individual, small-scale level can often feel very far from ‘high-level’ policy and decision-making. At Progressio, 12 viewpoint we seek to make the connections by rooting our policy women in Honduras analysis in our direct experience with people who are poor and marginalised – and by bringing their voices to the 14 Q&A negotiating table. Monika Galeano Small voices being heard loudly is something of a theme 16 reflection for this edition of Interact. Whether it’s the experience the lives of all living beings and potential of small-scale farmers being heard amidst the clamour of large-scale food production, or the voices of women standing up for their rights, we are seeking to make sure we can amplify and support the voices of people being heard where it matters. We believe the small voices of each one of us counts – through our actions, our participation and our understanding of the issues. For Progressio, those “voices” – those individual actions – are part of the global solidarity we seek to build. 2 focus interact winter 2009 • focus “People in the cities, they make the decisions, but they don’t know what it is like here. They are in their offices, they cannot imagine this life – maybe if they visited, but they do not. Rural people eat, breathe and sleep agriculture. For this we need water. We have to protect mother earth, and care for her.” This is the message that Fabiola Quishpe, a farmer from Ecuador, brought to the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen: see page 8 for more details. Fabiola (in white poncho) is pictured with (far left) Olga Guamán, Luisa María Ullcopilalumbo (centre right) and Blanca Quishpe (far right) in a house in Apahua community, province of Cotopaxi, Ecuador. Photo: Santiago Serrano/Majority World/Progressio 3 tab insight interact interact • winter 2009 winter 2009 • miracle workers “I learned that from these three plants – which are easy to grow in our difficult climate – you can make oil for lamps or to run engines, soap for the home, fertiliser for crops, and moisturiser for the body. If you are HIV positive you can boost your immune system with powder extract. One of the plants is particularly good for heart disease and eyesight problems. Moringa makes a good food supplement, a nice relish and is also good for skin complaints. It even tastes nice in tea – I take half a teaspoon with water every day!” Betty Mkusa, 55, a farmer in southern Malawi, shows farmers from neighbouring communities around her ‘garden’, where she grows – among other crops – three ‘miracle’ plants called Jatropha, Neem and Moringa. 4 The majority of small-scale farmers in Malawi are women – and they are leading the way in building a more sustainable future for rural communities in this tab impoverished country, writes Keith Ewing insight The last time I visited Chikwawa in southern Malawi, people were hungry. It was 2006 and a terrible drought had brought 12 million poor farming families with paper- thin livelihoods to the threshold of starvation. Vulnerable interact women were being hit especially hard – widows, single mothers, those who were HIV positive, or women caring for many children while their husbands travelled to Mozambique in search of work. Esnat, a middle-aged lady, told me how she had just winter 2009 • buried her 21-year-old daughter Serena, a divorced mother of two. Serena had gradually succumbed to hunger despite the watery porridge her family begged from neighbours. There were many stories of vulnerable people not surviving. I saw one very elderly woman with a hoe attacking the lifeless brown earth with relentless ferocity in a bid to prepare it for planting. Alice James, a 70-year-old widow, told me she had lost 10 of her 11 children to disease and a variety of misfortunes. We talked for some time about her life and the challenge of survival. As I left she said with a grim smile: “You might find us dead here next time.” Revolution My next visit to Malawi was earlier this year. It could not have been more different. I was there to witness a small revolution among women in Chilhambi 3 village and surrounding districts, who are being supported by Progressio partner Environment Africa. The start of a transformation in family income is being ushered in thanks to three ‘miracle’ plants called Jatropha, Neem and Moringa. The cultivation and marketing of these plants by villagers, Environment Africa believes, could begin to protect some of Malawi’s poorest people from constant vulnerability to crises. If the three plants are beginning to be seen locally as some kind of miracle, then Betty Mkusa, 55, is the arch- missionary, spreading the good news of their powers and profitability to local women, neighbours across the district and much further afield. Busloads of curious community groups from other districts of southern Malawi regularly converge on her home for tours of her garden and to hear Betty’s stories about Jatropha, Neem and Moringa. She speaks with the passion of someone who has ▶ 5 made a discovery that seems too good to from cultivating and selling Jatropha, Neem be true. Under an oppressive midday sun and Moringa. One of Betty’s neighbours, in her garden, Betty delivers a seminar to Mary Gomani (44), a mother of five whom insight community leaders from Zomba district. Betty introduced to the plants, is putting She eulogises about the properties of the herself through school as a result of the three plants – Moringa has seven times small business she has launched cultivating the Vitamin C of oranges and four times and selling the plants. the calcium of milk, she tells them. She She proudly states: ”I have started my interact describes the potential money savings education again. My parents died when I • on household costs such as soap, oil and was very young so I could not go to school. fertiliser for poor families, and also the I want to learn because education is very scope for income from selling seedlings to important. If you go to school you can do others. whatever you like. I have begun again in winter 2009 “Just this year,” she tells the group from Form Two, which means I am in a class Zomba to nods of approval, “I have sold with 14-year-olds,” she says with a laugh. seedlings worth 50,000 kwacha (£214).” “But they don’t mind having an older person there and we all get on very well Benefits together.” Local forestry officer, Mike Gareta, is full of praise for the Environment Africa Markets initiative, as it is reducing local people’s One of the difficulties facing Mary, Betty habit of chopping down trees to make and the many others in the surrounding charcoal, a practice which contributes to Shire valley who are learning about the environmental destruction across Africa. Jatropha, Neem and Moringa plants and “It is benefiting the environment. Little by starting to grow them for sale, is finding little trees in this area are recovering. This markets for the produce. “If my business project is about improving livelihoods. It improves I have plans to build a house, could make a great difference to the lives but first I will have to plant more Jatropha of people around here.” in order to boost production,” says Mary. Betty, who, with her husband, cares “Finding a bigger market than locally will for two orphans, is now able to pay their be a big challenge for us.” school fees thanks to the extra income That is where Progressio’s development ◀ “There is great potential here,” says Progressio development worker Innocent Ogaba (pictured talking to Betty Mkusa). “This project is all about improving the livelihood of the community and deriving environmental benefits, too – such as the absorption of C02 and the fixing of nitrogen in the soil.” 6 ◀ “Betty invited me to her house and I saw what she was doing, so I started growing the plants too,” insight says Mary Gomani. “I am now growing and selling seedlings, as well as using the plants in my home: for example, Moringa is a interact good pesticide. I have now bought a plot of land with the money I have made. Before I began this we did not have much money winter 2009 • coming into the house.” worker, Innocent Bidong Ogaba, comes of work on exploring potential markets for in. He has been working with Environment the products.” Africa to help people like Betty and Mary Betty, who is now known locally as identify the potential for marketing the “Mamma Jatropha”, agrees that the future various products that the three miracle looks bright for many women like her.