America.gov (Washington, DC)
Kathyrn McConnell
21 July 2008
Ten Nicaraguan women established their forestry cooperative so they could earn enough to improve their families' lives. At first, their Co-Fochinorte tree nursery struggled, and the women had to take on other jobs.
But then, in 2007, the nursery received a contract to supply trees under a commercial forestry project funded through the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation's five-year aid agreement with Nicaragua. The agreement aims to develop Nicaragua's rural economy.
The contract allowed Co-Fochinorte to produce trees on a large scale for the first time and to pay its members decent salaries. That year the co-op produced 100,000 trees and received a contract to provide even more trees in 2008.
Danelia Rivera, the co-op's vice chair, said the women never imagined they could make a good living from farming, which they love. The co-op is reinvesting some of its profits back into the business and continues to grow.
The co-op benefited from the aid agency's policy, adopted in 2006, to integrate women into all parts of its community-designed aid programs. The agency strives to provide equal opportunity to women and men in order to maximize the impact of programs on economic growth.
In Nicaragua's northwest region, where Co-Fochinorte is located, women first formed a consultative council to represent women farmers in shaping the parts of Nicaragua's MCC agreement that deal with rural development and land ownership.
WOMEN IN MADAGASCAR
In Madagascar, MCC funding is being used to help women gain access to credit so they can open and expand small businesses.
Sylvie Faramihaja, a credit counselor, puts her new MCC-funded moped and training to work traveling to communities in Madagascar's eastern region to teach women how to obtain a loan and manage a business. Many of the women she visits find it difficult to travel to a credit meeting in a distant community.
Counselors like Faramihaja also work with microcredit support groups, which help women get small loans without collateral and ensure the loans are repaid in weekly installments. The groups are established in partnership with large microfinance institutions.
The group-based approach to credit has proven to be effective with nearly a total repayment rate, MCC said in a June 25 feature on its Web site.
WOMEN IN LESOTHO
In Lesotho, MCC worked with the government to ensure gender equality was legally guaranteed before it agreed to provide the country with long-term funding.
The agency "appealed to the Lesotho government's sense of reason, by convincing them that any assistance provided by the United States for economic development would be only half as effective if half of Lesotho's population was excluded from the formal economy," according to U.S. Representative Diane Watson of California.
"The participation of women in the [development] process and helping them realize their political and economic rights are central to any discussion of development," MCC stated in its fiscal year 2009 budget justification.
MCC is a U.S. government corporation that seeks to reduce global poverty through the promotion of sustainable economic growth. Since its inception in 2004, MCC has approved multiyear funding agreements totaling more than $6.2 billion with 18 countries: Armenia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Vanuatu.
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