Special Announcement: Mama Catherine, 2010 GWWI Training participant, will be at WEA's Gala!

Mama Catherine and Alice, participants of the 2010 GWWI Training in Ghana,
parade the Biosand Water Filter they constructed with their community
through the streets of Cameroon.

What could be more exciting than having one participant of the 2010 West African Women and Water Training in Ghana join WEA to celebrate its 5th Birthday!

On May 18th, Catherine Makane Mwengella from Cameroon will join our community for the 5th Annual Gala at the Julia Morgan Ball Room in San Francisco. We cannot imagine a better way for our community to directly hear the voices of our Africa-based partners with whom we have collaborated to design and implement sustainable water projects to improve the health of communities across Africa.

Catherine Makane Mwengella, who acquired the nickname “Mama Catherine” during the 2010 training, is the President of the NGO Women for Peace in Cameroon. In Ghana, she taught us several songs which have been woven into the fabric of WEA-- “We are Together” and “Progress.”

With overwhelming support from their community, Mama Catherine and her partner Alice Balemba Njanga, the Deputy Mayor of the Konye Rural Council in the Southwest region of Cameroon, came to the 2010 GWWI African Women and Water Training in Ghana on a mission to provide clean drinking water  in communities across the Southwest region. Mama Catherine and Alice’s vision of ensuring safe drinking water is imperative to their communities health and safety, since most families have little access to potable drinking water (approximately 5 gallons per day).  

While in Ghana these two dynamic women received training on the Biosan Water Filter (BSF). Alice and Catherine took this knowledge back to their communities and immediately started to inspire better health in their region. Not only have these two incredible women joined their community in constructing a Biosand Water Fiter, they have also taught over 188 people in four villages the principles of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) since March 2010.

We are thrilled to share our respect for Mama Catherine and our incredible pride in the efforts she and Alice are bringing to Southwestern Cameroon with our WEA Family on May 18th.

One-Click to Support WEA!

WEA has recently teamed up with eco-model, Josie Maran to run a campaign benefiting our work!

Josie Maran Cosmetics has a product called argan oil, which is a skin oil organically grown in Morocco by a fair trade women's cooperative.  For what it's worth, Wikipedia tells us that "All argan sold today is produced by a women's cooperative that shares the profits among the local women of the Berber tribe. The cooperative has established an ecosystem reforestation project so that the supply of argan oil will not run out and the income that is currently supporting the women will not disappear. The money is providing healthcare and education to the local women, and supporting the entire community as a whole."  Cool!

On the product's page there's a Facebook "Like" button (scroll down a bit).  For every person who clicks the "like" button, Josie's cosmetic company will donate a dollar to WEA - up to $25,000. 

Will you support women's environmental leadership with a click?

Women in the Center of Crop Diversity & Food Security

Women farmers displaying indigenous seeds that they save at a community seed bank in Karnataka.

Blog entry by Rucha Chitnis, India Program Director, who is traveling in Southern India to research women farmers’ green traditional knowledge systems for farming, seed saving and managing their natural resources.

Let’s start from the very beginning.  And some might say that it all began with the seeds.

Seed, a symbol of fertility and perpetuity, of culture and sustenance in India, is also becoming a symbol of self-reliance and a key resource to preserve the biodiversity of indigenous crops on small farms across the country.

In Southern India, GREEN Foundation, a community-based organization that works with small and marginalized farmers, including tribals and Dalits, in semi-arid regions of Karnataka, has immersed itself in this challenge of promoting the conservation of indigenous seeds among farmers since 1996.

During my visit to the Foundation, I learn that women farmers are in the center of their seed conservation efforts due to their gendered roles as the primary seedkeepers in India.  The Foundation began its work with five women farmers and a handful of indigenous seeds. “When we began talking to the farmers, we realized that traditional varieties of seeds had almost disappeared. Without seeds what we were attempting to do would be a non-starter,” notes Dr. Vanaja Ramprasad, founder and a seed conservationist.

The Foundation believes that women farmers also hold the key to preserving the biodiversity of the crops and their knowledge systems of seed saving and mixed and natural farming are vast, which need to be documented and promoted.  Dr. Vanaja shares an example of an elderly woman farmer, who identified nearly 80 varieties of greens in her field, as well as their uses for medicinal and nutrition needs. “Her knowledge was phenomenal,” she says. “When it comes to food security, women play a key role in identifying food that is available. In lean seasons, they trek to the nearby forests, and they are able to identify roots and tubers for their food requirements and medicinal plants.” 

Dr. Vanaja Ramprasad, founder of the GREEN Foundation

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This intimate knowledge of women, believes Dr. Ramprasad is often undermined by the scientific community and biotechnology companies who promote agro-technologies, which might not be appropriate for rural communities, and especially for the economically disadvantaged farmers. Dr. Ramprasad shares that some of the greens on the farms, which poor farmers in India subsist on during lean periods, might be considered as weeds by some agro-companies, which are eliminated by herbicides.

The Foundation programs promote the conservation of agro-biodiversity, ecological farming practices, seed conservation and creation of community-managed seed banks.   Seed conservation has been in the center of the programmatic efforts of the Foundation. Their research and analysis showed that India’s Green Revolution in the 1960s eroded the diversity of indigenous seeds with the introduction of the high yielding varieties of seeds and pervasive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  As farmers moved away from the practice of saving and exchanging seeds with their neighbors and families to buying the HYV seeds from the market, their own indigenous knowledge systems related to farming and seed saving became slowly irrelevant in the face of industrial agriculture.

 Gene bank of indigenous seeds set up by the GREEN Foundation

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“India is a land that had over 100,000 varieties of rice,” she says, but now only a few popular varieties are sold in urban markets. The Green Revolution also focused on intensive cultivation of rice and wheat and ignored other indigenous varieties of crops, like millets--considered to be a vital source of nutrition in rural India.  The Foundation encourages women farmers to save indigenous varieties of millets, which are ideal crops to grow in arid and semi-arid areas as some varieties are drought-resistant and require little water for irrigation, compared to rice and other cash crops. As small-scale and marginalized women farmers largely depend on the rain for their irrigation needs, millets are an important source of food security in areas where recurring droughts or dwindling and unreliable rainfall cause stress among farmers.

“In many ways, we have to rekindle the pride that the farmers have in their traditional farming systems,” says K. P Suresh, Associate Director of the Foundation. He believes that the traditional role women play in seed selection, seed conservation, and seed treatment to prevent the crop from developing unhealthy, are critical and need to be documented and promoted.  Seeds also symbolize the cultural heritage of communities across India, and they are an integral part of many rituals, ceremonies and festivals.  And seed conservationists, like Dr. Ramprasad, affirm that the practice of seed saving has been a cornerstone of farming traditions that made agriculture, itself, a way of life.

Indigenous Community Enterprises: Building Sustainable Futures, One Home at a Time

Edward and Rose in their Hogan home 

Zoe Levitt, Consultant for Indigenous Community Enterprises (ICE), a Women's Earth Alliance Partner Organization

March 14th was a bright, windy day in Window Rock.  I waited outside the Navajo Nation Museum to meet Hazel James from Indigenous Community Enterprises (ICE) for the start of my site visit to gather photos and conduct interviews for their new website.  She had kindly offered to be my guide on a tour of several of ICE’s Elder Hogan Homes and Green Homes projects on the reservation. 

As we set out on the road, Hazel began to share with me some of the important elements of the traditional Hogan - a round dwelling structure that has significance for Navajo people who practice traditional religion.  “The sacredness of the Hogan is understood as the womb of mother Earth, with a fireplace at the center of the home representing the center of the four mountains, and the hole at the top of the dome conveying a connection to the universe” she explained.

It is with these sentiments in mind that ICE has developed a graceful solution to the contradicting land paradigms of the U.S. government and Navajo traditions. Yes, ICE was securing the right to build homes in line with Western concepts of land use via the homesite lease program, but they were building homes that connected generations--that stood as testaments to ability of the Nizhoni Dine culture to thrive in the face of forced assimilation.

Indeed, as the homeowners showed us, these elegant yet simple Hogan homes were strongly tied to people’s sense of dignity and self-sufficiency. An elderly couple we visited beamed recalling how the modern conveniences of their new home were critical for elderly people like themselves. Edward, 73, struggles with heart, kidney, and prostate problems and is blind in one eye.  Before receiving their ICE home, Edwards and his wife, Rose, were living in their daughters’ home without electricity or running water.  Due to his deteriorating health, Edward had several accidents slipping on steps while carrying wood and walking into doors because of the lack of light. Today Edward and Rose, receive many visitors stopping by to admire their home and find out who built it.  “It’s warm in the wintertime and it’s nice and cool in the summertime.  And I really like that the doors are wide, so if anyone has a wheelchair, you can go in and out very easily…You know, it’s just beautiful…We’re very, very blessed.”

In recent years, ICE has added another a “green” element to their building philosophy. For ICE, building “green” is about providing housing solutions that are economically practical and environmentally sustainable.  Two of the alternative materials they use, Strawbale and SIPs, or Structurally Insulated Panels, are highly energy efficient, which is particularly important in the Southwest’s desert climate. ICE has also equipped some of their homes farther off the infrastructure grid with solar panels and water cisterns to enable basic utilities in lieu of power lines and water pipes.

Throughout my short but jam-packed site visit, it became strikingly clear how important ICE’s home-building is for people living in some of the most remote areas of the reservation, where access to formal infrastructure is not logistically (or politically) feasible. The work that ICE does is rooted in a strong respect for Navajo culture and the ripples of the work have effects beyond the local level.  Every home that is built using energy efficient materials reduces the demand for energy from power plants that poison local communities and pollute the air.  As Navajo Nation leaders struggle to strike a balance between economic expansion and cultural and environmental preservation, ICE serves as a powerful example of how indigenous economic development and self-sufficiency can go hand in hand with cultural and environmental integrity.

Indigenous Community Enterprises’ mission is to work directly with indigenous communities to identify and develop community and economic development opportunities that respect and incorporate traditional culture, foster responsible stewardship of the land, maintain and enhance the well-being and self-reliance of communities, and support and protect the dignity and responsibility of individuals.  In addition to affordable home construction, ICE supports economic empowerment and cultural preservation through financial literacy workshops, Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), and a Native Foods project.  For more information, contact Hazel James at hjames@icehome.org

Florence and Fulera bring Improved Access to Drinking Water to Ghanaian Schools

The following article was written by Beth Robertson, Research Fellow at Women's Earth Alliance. This article was published in the Spring 2011 "A Matter of Spirit" newsletter published by Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center.  To read more click here.

Fulera and Florence during the 2010 GWWI Grassroots Training in Ghana

Women in Bimbilla, Ghana—and women all over the world—are the cornerstones of their communities.  They shoulder the burden of water-harvesting, spending countless hours fetching and managing water for drinking, agriculture and cooking.  Women are also key to improving access to safe drinking water in their communities.

In 2010, two powerful women leaders from Ghana—Florence Iddrisu and Fulera Mumuni—participated in a training through the Global Water’s Initiative.  They were introduced to four different area appropriate technologies designed to address issues of water and sanitation.  Following the training, these women leaders developed an action plan to construct a rainwater harvesting system that would serve the women’s dormitory at their local high school.  Florence and Fulera chose Bimbilla High School for their project because, like many schools across Africa, it was not equipped with ample water facilities.  Students and teachers would often have to bring water to school or fetch water during class time, limiting time devoted to studies.

Florence and Fulera’s pilot project brought tremendous change to Bimbilla, decreasing the hours that female students have to walk in search of water.  The female dormitory at Bimbilla High School now has a complete rainwater harvesting system that serves 210 female students, providing them improved access to potable drinking water at the school. Today, Florence and Fulera continue to spread knowledge of low cost, effective solutions to inadequate sources of water in other areas in their community.

Safe drinking water is a human right and the participation of women in conceiving technologies to address issues of water and sanitation is essential. The Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI), a program of Women’s Earth Alliance in partnership with Crabgrass, embraces the idea that local women leaders who understand the needs of their communities merely need the resources, confidence and training to inspire change and improve the health of their communities. GWWI holds capacity-building trainings throughout Africa to equip local women leaders with technology training, networking support, and seed funding to launch sustainable water projects in their communities. “Access to fresh water and sanitation does not only improve the health of a family, but it also provides an opportunity for girls to go to school, and for women to use their time more productively.”1  Women are the stewards of their natural resources in their communities and therefore hold the key to improving access to safe drinking water in their communities.

Florence and Fulera’s model succeeded because of its bottom-up, grassroots nature. Top-down, dependency driven development solutions have failed communities too many times.  Co-designing solutions to development challenges based on local vision rather than outside wants are the foundation for sustainable development—investing in existing leadership and knowledge of women who know what their communities need most. This approach avoids the pitfalls of top-down practices and outsider-generated attempts at assistance that can fall short or even reinforce damaging dynamics. For sustainable development to take root, we must rely on the local, environmental stewards and community caretakers to identify and co-design solutions that address issues of water and sanitation. Local women understand the needs of their community; all they need are the resources and confidence to design solutions and engineer change.

Ndudi and Elizabeth Improve Sanitation and Community Health in Western Nigeria

Elizabeth at the 2010 GWWI Women and Water Training in Ghana

The Global Women’s Water Initiative continues to make ripples of change! 2010 GWWI team Ndudi and Elizabeth of Western Nigeria recently met with members of the Idoye community to collaborate on solving  issues of water and sanitation in their area. During the meeting Ndudi and Elizabeth introduced the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) program and, with the help of the community, constructed a much needed Eco-san composting toilet.  To the members of the Idoye community, the Eco-san toilet will decrease the amount of open defecation and bring real change, improving the health of the community and ensuring the well-being of future generations.

Ndudi at the GWWI 2010 Women and Water Training in Accra, Ghana

The 198 participants included school children, the community chief, community health officers and women leaders. Through WASH education activities, these groups learned about water collection, safe storage, the importance of clean water and the benefits of sanitation. In order to promote sustainability, the toilet was constructed with local materials, keeping the costs low while supporting the local economy. Ndudi and Elizabeth also gave an orientation and posted instructions about the proper care and use of the toilets. By mobilizing a maintenance committee and sharing the knowledge of the technology with a diverse group of community members, Ndudi and Elizabeth have ensured that the facility is kept clean and continues to be useful for the Idoye community. 

The project was an extraordinary experience for the GWWI team, Ndudi and Elizabeth and the community at large. As the team reported, “It was a very great opportunity to improve the health condition of our women and children who are most vulnerable to poor environmental conditions.”

With dedication, compassion and joy Ndudi and Elizabeth, along with the members of the GWWI Team and the Idonye community, have brought real change to the region. Their inspiring story adds a drop in the rapidly spreading ripple of the Global Women's Water Initiative. To learn more about GWWI, visit http://africanwomenandwater.org/

We are Together: Sharing observations from the 55th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women!

UN Women's Commission on the Status of Women

 By Maame Yelbert-Obeng, WEA's Africa Program Director

During the first week of March, I had the opportunity to attend part of the 55th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) organized by the United Nations at its headquarters in New York. This year’s CSW session, focusing strategically on “Gender, Education, Science and Technology, and Employment,” was special as it coincided with the historic launch of The UN Women—created from the amalgamation of the various gender units of the United Nations. The UN Women has a strong foundation from which to build, drawing from the lessons learned by the various gender units that have now combined to create the new collective approach for addressing women’s rights and empowerment. Thankfully, the organization’s focus on connecting with grassroots women already is a positive sign for engaging and amplifying the voices of women and girls who for long have been invisible and marginalized in the mainstream women’s movement. It is exciting to know that UN Women will draw from multiple talents from diverse backgrounds to accomplish its mandate.

The Commission’s strong focus on youth is a key, as youth leadership is crucial to designing innovative solutions to the world’s challenges. Young women and men who are part of networks such as the Moremi Initiative, an organization with the vision to engage, inspire and equip the next generation of women leaders and Young Women’s Knowledge and Leadership Institute (YOWLI) showcased the leadership potential and on-going creative solutions being generated by youth for social change, at the CSW event. Sitting in the various spaces where these dialogues and sessions occurred, I felt not only a glimpse of hope, but also gratitude for the abundance of resources not in the traditional sense of money, but in the potential for what  strategic engagement and investment in youth could contribute to addressing the world’s challenges in a holistic and equitable manner.

Being part of an organization that is filling in the gaps and making linkages between women and the environment via innovative solutions to food, land, water and climate justice, it was invigorating to see the urgency the CSW created around addressing the impact of climate change, particularly as it affects women. Several panels and sessions focused on creating integrated solutions and resilience to this issue, and in the African context, it was groundbreaking to see grassroots women leaders and groups as well as youth from Uganda, the Gambia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Namibia and Kenya, sharing their stories of how they are mitigating the impact of climate change. At the same time as the CSW program, Groots International/Huairou Commission organized an extended session on leadership training for grassroots women globally, who are working directly at the intersection of gender and the environment.

I made some personal and important connections at CSW that will allow for a deeper engagement with networks and organizations on the ground in Africa to ensure economic and environmental security for women. These connections along with Women’s Earth Alliance’s core programs in capacity building, communication and advocacy will strengthen our work in Africa and contribute to making meaningful and sustainable changes in the lives of women and girls on the continent and in the diaspora. They will also inform our partnership model based on mutual respect for local knowledge and expertise, peer learning, and the ability to prioritize the most marginalized groups, as we equip them with various skills and resources and facilitate the space for them to set the agenda and design innovative women led solutions to environmental challenges. I believe that on this journey to ensure women’s livelihoods and environmental justice, we work, sing, dance and fight together and never alone.

Indigenous Women and the Way Forward from Fukushima

“In a [Navajo] creation story, the people were given a choice of two yellow powders. They chose the yellow dust of corn pollen, and were instructed to leave the other yellow powder—uranium—in the soil and never to dig it up. If it were taken from the ground, they were told, a great evil would come.”

- Winona LaDuke, Director, Honor the Earth

While Japan reels from tsunami and an escalating nuclear catastrophe, the Obama administration last week affirmed its commitment to nuclear power’s role in our national “clean energy” portfolio.  Our leaders can’t account for the safety of our 104 domestic nuclear power plants in a major earthquake, the national security risks of nuclear proliferation for energy, or the nuclearwaste disposal conundrum.  Nonetheless, uranium mining and the development of new nuclear power facilities continues apace.

Women are raising their voices to demand safe energy.  Renowned activists like Helen Caldicott and Joanna Macy, along with scores of concerned women at the grassroots, denounce nuclear energy as a dangerous and foolhardy enterprise from its cradle – the environmental and public health damage wrought by uranium mining, to its grave – the unsolvable problem of radioactive waste disposal. 

These leaders call attention to the unique and often disproportionate health impacts borne by women, children and fetuses from nuclear radiation.  They describe the outrageous risks of nuclear energy as an intentional or accidental weapon of war.  And they share a vision for a nuclear-free U.S. energy portfolio.  

Indigenous women, particularly, stand at the front-lines of the nuclear energy debates, with their lives and the lives of their families and communities threatened by uranium mining.  Southwestern tribal peoples such as Navajo, Havasupai and Western Shoshone suffer the egregious impacts of uranium extraction on water, land, and health – especially because of the relative lack of federal protection for tribal natural resources and public health in the face of the uranium boom.

In some Navajo communities, for example, one person on average from each family – thousands of people, overall – has died from health issues related to uranium exposure in the mines.  The largest nuclear spill in U.S. history took place on the Navajo Nation, at Rio Puerco in 1979 – and yet the federal government recently authorized the reinitiation of mining activities at that very site.  Lands surrounding the Grand Canyon are uranium-rich and targeted for mining – threatening the water sources and lives of Havasupai peoples who live downstream from many of the proposed mines.   

But women like Carletta Tilousi (Havasupai), Anna Rondon (Navajo), and Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe) speak out about the dangers of nuclear energy to their peoples’ bodies and sacred lands. These courageous women are part of a larger movement of Indigenous leaders articulating a powerful vision for a carbon-free, nuclear-free future.  Tribal lands, currently exploited for coal, oil, gas and uranium, are replete with renewable energy resources – it is said that the entirety of the Southwestern U.S.’ solar energy potential could power the entire U.S. electricity grid.  

WEA’s Advocacy Network stands in solidarity with Indigenous women environmental leaders, providing critical technical expertise to support the realization of their visions for a sustainable, balanced, just energy portfolio.  Tribal lands, presently exploited as “energy colonies,” can lead by example towards a renewable energy-powered future.  The crisis in Japan calls us to move towards a stable, life-protecting energy portfolio – fortunately, Indigenous women leaders are offering us all a map to this powerful, necessary path.

Photo: Havasupai prayer items at uranium mine near Red Butte in Northern Arizona.

Report from the Field: Africa Program

The Africa Program and the Global Women's Water Initiative are fired up and diligently preparing for our upcoming Women and Water trainings in Uganda. We will be hosting two trainings in July: a Grassroots Women's Training and an Advanced Trainer's Training. The Advanced Trainer's Training will include GWWI Trainers and graduates from our past trainings along with Global Fellows who are preparing for a future in international development. The participants of the Advanced Trainer's Training will have the opportunity to support the incoming Grassroots Teams and help them design and implement their projects in their communities.

Celebrating the 100-year Anniversary of International Women's Day

Rucha Chitnis, India Program Director, with women farmers in Uttar Pradesh

Today marks the 100-year anniversary of International Women’s Day. With ripples of change created by powerful movements world wide, our global community has come far since 1911. And, there is still a long way to go. The UN recently recognized that “longstanding inequalities in the distribution of resources have placed women at a disadvantage in participating in and benefitting from development processes.” This is despite significant research that places women’s empowerment as a necessary condition for healthy, politically stable, economically sound, and environmentally safe societies.

This is why we created the Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) – an organization that creates innovative solutions to issues of water, food, land and climate through collaborative initiatives that train, connect, and empower emerging women leaders.

Here's the kind of change our programs create on a regular basis in the regions where we work: Lucy Mulenkei was a 2008 Global Women’s Water Initiative Training participant. Lucy's home is in Northern Kenya, a drought-prone region experiencing the acute effects of climate change. Lucy took her rainwater harvesting, WASH education, water testing, and solar pasteurization skills straight to her community, where she organized women's groups to launch tree planting projects, built rainwater harvesting systems, and created safe water supply for her community of 25,000 people. Every skill Lucy learned was multiplied by the dozens of other people she trained. In December, Lucy was even featured in Newsweek Magazine for her environmental leadership, alongside WEA allies Dr. Wangari Maathai and Vandana Shiva. This is the ripple effect in action.

Over the last 5 years, WEA’s Africa Program has forged partnerships with 30 community-based organizations across 11 African nations providing water technology training, economic development, and seed capital to many African communities through the Global Women’s Water Initiative.  Our North America Program mobilizes support for the environmental justice campaigns of our 12 Native American partner organizations through WEA's Advocacy Network of legal, policy and business experts.  Our newest India Program will provide funding and training on rights education, ecological farming and appropriate technology to grassroots Indian women leaders to improve food and economic security of local communities, preserve the environment and traditional knowledge systems, and build political will.

Why the need?

• Women are water harvesters; but are not consulted about water projects. Women and children in Africa alone spend approximately 40 billion hours every year fetching and carrying water –Yet they are rarely consulted during the implementation of ‘improved water projects’ in their communities, resulting in outside technologies that are not designed to meet their needs.

• Women are significant food producers, yet they struggle to access land. Women are the stewards of natural resources, and major participants in global agriculture production, yet only 1% of the world’s women own land and less than 5% of women receive farming extension training.

Addressing these issues is a matter of survival, yet for decades traditional development programs have invested billions of dollars trying to “fix” these problems often without consulting women, the core stakeholders in communities. This has led to years of failed projects. Although women are cited as “target beneficiaries” women’s critical contributions to food security, water access, and community health, is overlooked.


WEA’s collaborative work addresses these issues through partnership and listening, and is innovating new models for community development that are based on an investment in women. When trained, connected and empowered, women become positioned to guide the development of their communities away from degradation and dependency on outside international aid institutions towards self-reliance.

On this day, we are honored to be another ripple in the legacy of women and courageous men who have been making waves and turning the tide toward a world we are proud to leave for future generations. Stay tuned in the coming months for stories of hope from inspiring women attending WEA training programs in Africa, India and North America.