In Guinea, a cooperative empowers rural women
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In the Katfoura village on the Tristao Islands in Guinea, one civil society organization is providing rural women with new opportunities to generate income and improve community life.
This video produced for UN Women, illustrates how Partenariat Recherches Environnement Medias (PREM) has helped empower rural women. Through a grant from UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality, PREM has helped rural women form several cooperatives and taught its members how to plant a vitamin-rich tree called Moringa and how to clean, dry and sell its leaves with the help of solar technology. Used as medicine or a dietary supplement by societies around the world, Moringa also supports biodiversity and prevents soil erosion.
PREM has helped bring together women in the community through the creation of Moringa cooperatives. Made up of local women who come together to share ideas, it gives women an opportunity to build leadership skills, strengthen community bonds, and participate in economic decisions that affect the community.
PREM is one of over 120 civil society organizations that has been awarded a grant by UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality since 2009. In the last six years, the Fund for Gender Equality has successfully awarded USD $64 million to grantee programmes in 80 countries. To date, such programmes have reached over 10 million women, girls and boys as direct beneficiaries.
The first video was was screened at the UN Women’s Executive Board Meeting on 9 February and will be officially launched along with a set of research briefs, photographs and two more videos from Guinea, Lebanon and Sudan at a side event on women’s economic empowerment in fragile contexts during the 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, on 22 March.