Women power

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

In Madagascar (and at many other countries) the statistics show a significant discrepancy between the incomes of rural women and men. The local women’s organisation in Ankadinondry (in the Bongolova region), AFPB, is founded with the aim to improve the livelihood of rural women. The organisation provides all kinds of services for her members (45 women), like training in women’s rights, information about nutrition and advice for starting economic activities. In 2009 AFPB applied for funds from Agriterra for a poultry project: the women learned how to breed chickens and run their business as a group.

All the members participate in the poultry project. Mrs. Odette Raveloarinanana is one of them. She explains that before the project started, they received training from poultry experts of the national farmers’ federation in how to breed and feed chicken. And they built two henhouses by themselves. With the funds, the organisation bought 400 chickens for the group to start with and the necessary materials such as spades, troughs for water and fodder, vaccines and a cooler to store the vaccines. They learned how to vaccinate the chickens themselves. Mrs. Odette speaks of a good preparation and has high expectations. Most of the chicken lay well and the chickens multiply quickly. Mrs. Odette and some of the other members use part of the eggs for baking cakes which she sells on order, e.g. to hotels or for wedding parties. Besides the profit they make out of the poultry, they feel self-sufficient and independent.
 
The group grows a special grass variety to feed to the chickens, this way they do not need to buy fodder. Not everything runs smoothly, the group also encountered some problems: during last summer some of the chicken died because of the extreme heat. There do not exist medicines against heat disease, they couldn’t do anything to cure the sick chickens. Heat sickness is a really infectious disease, that’s why they keep the poultry at three different locations to avoid that all the chickens get infected and die in case of heat sickness or other infectious diseases. They used the money out of the cakes and the sold chicken to buy new ones. The buying price for chickens is about 6.000 ariary (≈ €2,3), they sell them for an average price of 10.000 (≈ €3,8). They mainly sell at the local market, but try to make contracts with hotels.