Grassroots Women Exchange: Land & leadership tools

Author: Huairou Commission Update
Category: Africa General
Date: 2/8/2010
Source: Huairou Commission
Source Website: http://www.huairou.org

Summary & Comment: A short report of a creative gender-based capacity building workshop in Zambia for women that focuses on women gaining control over land and property and improving their leadership skills in savings schemes, collective land purchase, and other activities all designed to enable women to assume strong and productive leadership roles.

A Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA) grassroots leadership team took part in a series of Peer-to-Peer Exchanges in Zambia with the Katuba Women's Association, and People's Process, Homeless and Poor People's Federation of Zambia, from February 1st through 5th. The exchanges were held just prior to the 2010 WLLA Land Academy. During the exchanges participating grassroots women and men shared their successful strategies and stories on how women were able to gain control over land and property and improve their leadership skills, such as through women's savings schemes, collective land purchase and local-to-local dialogues. Obstacles and challenges to women's ability to gain, claim, and maintain land and property were also addressed by all participating groups. Overall the exchanges were a great success.

Katuba Women's Association works to improve women's ability to own land

Katuba Women's Association (KWA) hosted the first three days of the Exchange, sharing the work of the 50 women's clubs that make up the Association. The WLLA leadership team visited KWA's offices and leadership center, as well as the women's clubs in the communities of Nayulanda and Chombela. In these clubs, women save daily, weekly and monthly funds for health, orphan care, and collective land purchase. The women also! engage in a number of income-generating activities, such as growing vegetables, knitting, goat-rearing, and they plan to open a weekly women's market space to increase their profits.

The group also learned of the Association's advocacy around obtaining marriage certificates and property documents as well as their partnerships with local leaders to hold dialogues about women's rights and to speak out against property grabbing, and the leadership workshops they hold. Ann Mwemba of the Marvelous Women's Club said, "After the workshop, I learned something about internal and external barriers. I learned about how to deal with my husband when he protested. I feel very strong now."

People's Process and Homeless and Poor People's Federation of Zambia build houses

With members of Peoples' Process and Katuba Women's Association, the team left for the Copper Belt, North of Lusaka, to continue their exchanges ! with groups belonging to the People's Process. The team visited the communities Kitwe and Kalalushi to learn about their house-building project. The team learned that a number of women's savings clubs had come together to successfully lobby the government for land and were able to secure a collective land title, to solicit for brick-making machines materials, and are now building new homes, with water and electricity.

In both communities visited, the groups were happy to say that since October 2009, 25 homes were under construction with a final goal of 300 houses in the first phase. The project involved everyone, and one woman exclaimed, "Our husbands are involved. They are encouraging us to get on this project to have this house together. They want us to be landlords."

Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA) Grassroots Leadership Team

The leadership team was comprised of Fati Alhassan of Grassroots Sisterhood Foundation of Ghana, Emily Tjale of Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA) in South Africa, and Aggrey Majimbo of GROOTS Kenya. Throughout the five days, the grassroots team shared their best practices from Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. From the grassroots leadership team, Ms. Alhassan of GSF stressed the importance of raising awareness through media and radio dialogues, and the success she has had through Local-to-Local Dialogues, bringing women into decision-making positions.

"As soon as men said women were not supposed to participate, we knew it was a very important thing. Women had to be involved in decision making around land and now they are." Emily Tjale of LAMOSA emphasized the importance of educating grassroots communities in their awareness-raising activities, in collaboration with key partners, on laws and policies that are up to be passed, how they will impact their communities and how they can impact these bills to positively impact grassroots women's control over land and property.

As the only man as part of the Peer Exchange team, Majimbo Aggrey joked with the participants, "You may be asking yourself why I am here, as a man. But I want to explain that, even though I am here as a man and working with GROOTS Kenya, our call is one. What we are trying to advocate is that a woman has got the right to be heard. That women must be in all levels of decision-making."

Lessons Learned

The five-day Peer Exchange and Site Visit closed Saturday February 6th with a closing meeting, where participants from Katuba Women's Association, People's Process, Homeless and Poor People's Federation of Zambia, and the leadership team discussed their lessons learned, evaluated their experience and made recommendations for future Exchanges. The group felt they had gained a lot from the experience, connecting the similarities across the four countries, and imparting lessons of how each group could continue to strengthen their work, through follow-up Local Dialogues, women's savings clubs ! and income-generating activities. Fati Alhassan said it best when she exclaimed, "We see that the success in all of these countries came from everyone sticking together, finding strength in unity, and never giving up."