Sangin Nuea is a small Karen village in the remote mountain range of Omkoi district, Chiang Mai province. This is where Ms. Songsri Mitsathit’s family lives. She has been a Community Facilitator (CF) in the Pwo Karen Women Empowerment for Holistic Community Development Project for nearly two years. “I like to work with Heifer because it allows me to learn many new things that I can apply to use in my family and my community,” the 25-year-old woman said. “I am proud of being a change agent for women and men in my community.”
Songsri and her 5-year-old daughter Nareerat
Songsri, the oldest of 13 children, is married and has one daughter, Nareerat. Her family is Pow Karen ethnic minority. It is a belief and tradition of Karen people that cause women to not be treated as equals to men.
With Heifer, Songsri works hard to run project activities and follow up with project participants in the same and different communities. She travels on a motorcycle from one community to another. Although, she is a skillful rider, the steep and dirty mountainous roads cause her to have frequent accidents, especially during the rainy season when the road is muddy and slippery. “It is very difficult and I have accidents often, but it is not serious,” Songsri said. “I am more worried about the progress of the self-help group than this challenge. I want to make sure that they take good care of their livestock and apply the knowledge received from the trainings in their lives. As a woman it is very challenging to change mindset of men and women towards sustainable development, since they are used to being the receivers. But, it won’t stop my mission to improve the livelihood of my people.”
At first, many of the self-help groups didn’t fully accept Songsri, but that did not discourage her from assisting the villagers. “Before, women were voiceless and were not involved with any decision making,” Songsri recalled. “We just followed what the village headman, our fathers or husbands said.”
Songsri and her sow
When she is not busy with project activities, Songsri helps her husband at their pumpkin and chili farm and raises three pigs. Two sows just gave birth to a total of 11 piglets. Trained as a Community Animal Health Worker (CAHW), she takes very good care of her animals. She learned about pig feed formulation from other community facilitators and started to make her own. When project staff visited her family, she enthusiastically showed them the fermented feed. She wanted to make sure she did it right so that she could teach others. When faced with issues regarding her animals’ health, Songsri asked the Omkoi district livestock official for advice. “One of my sows didn’t have enough milk to feed her piglet,” she said. “but I remember the livestock official told me to apply the other sow’s milk to the piglets’ mouths so would get used to one another.”
Songsri is an enthusiastic, but humble and sincere woman. She always cooperates well with activities in the field or during meetings and training in the city. With her parents’ limited income, they could not support her aspirations for higher education, but that does not stop her from learning on her own. Even with her busy work and family schedule, Songsri continues to further her studies through informal schooling. “I want to set myself as a role model for people in my community, especially women,” she said. “I want them to be more confident to speak up about their problems and show their abilities. I also want to prove that women are as capable as men.”
Standing next to her is her daughter, Nareerat Mitsathit, who is five-years-old. Nareerat is a kindergarten student at the informal education center of Sangin Nuea village. Holding and kissing her daughter, Songsri said, “I want to be a role model for my daughter and I want her to have better education so she can help develop our community in the future.”
Story and Photos by: Sangwan Sapma,
Communication and Networking Manager,
Heifer Thailand
Additional Photo by: Bjorn Slis,
Volunteer
It is a cold Thursday in Thafeni, a small village approximately 50 kilometers from Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Somewhere among a group of 172 members of the Sukuma Poultry Project is Ms. Cynthia Khambule, 54. Dressed in a brown skirt, red takkies, a brown jersey and a warm red scarf, Cynthia, together with the other project members, is attending chicken management training organized by Heifer International South Africa (Heifer). For Cynthia, training is another step toward becoming a small successful farmer who no longer will have to suffer with food and income insecurity. But Ms. Khambule and her family have had to wait many years for change to come.
Mrs. Vorng Sophoan, 40, and her husband, Nhem Seab, 42, live with their three children in Beng village, Prey Pone commune, Kampong Trabek district, Svay Rieng province. In October 2009, when Heifer’s Women’s Empowerment and Holistic Community Development project started in the village in partnership with Chetthor, Mrs. Sophoan and her husband participated in the project orientation meeting facilitated by Chetthor staff; they decided to join the Self-Help Group (SHG).
With their strong commitment in applying the Cornerstones and simple agricultural techniques they learned from the training provided by Chetthor and Heifer on how to cultivate rice, grow vegetables, raise and care for livestock, and improve the quality of farm soil by using manure. Mrs. Sophoan’s family is now able to earn extra income from selling surplus vegetables, chickens and pigs. Her family also took a loan from the group to produce traditional wine for selling in the local market and to Vietnam. As a result, they were not only able to have enough food to eat for the entire year, they also were able to buy almost 4 acres of farm land, one new motorbike for family transportation, a small rice mill machine for serving the needs of the community as well as generate additional income for the family, in which they can use it to improve their house and send all their children to school.
