Ritu speaking with a market vendor in Accra, Ghana

This week, Ritu Sharma, Women Thrive’s Co-founder and President, has been in Ghana and Burkina Faso, trying to learn about what life is like for women farmers, what their governments are doing to empower them, and what U.S. assistance programs can do to help. Accompanied by a team of Women Thrive staff, Ritu has met with local women’s organizations, such as their advocacy partner, Coordinator Coalition Burkinabe pour Le Droit du la Femmes (CBDF), a coalition of 15 women’s associations that educates Burkinabe women and helps them advocate for better economic rights. She has also met with individual women farmers, Burkina Faso government officials, and U.S. development agencies working in the country.
Read Ritu’s daily diaries and conversations with women farmers.

For most women in Burkina Faso, where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line, life is a daily struggle. Typically living in rural areas, most women have little access to ongoing education or potable water. Yet because they are the majority of farmers and are responsible for child care, Burkinabe women spend much of their day performing field work, growing food and crops for their families. However, despite this often grueling work, many Burkinabe women are not allowed to own the very land they farm, because customary often law excludes women from land ownership, preventing them from investing in the tools, irrigation, and seeds that would make their families better fed and their children better off. Learn more about women’s role in agriculture.

-McKenzie Lock, Women Thrive Worldwide

At the end of May the Senate passed a bill to provide emergency aid for
Jordan, Burma, and food security – urgent humanitarian needs that our
government needs to address.

The problem:

The Senate funded the assistance by proposing to cut the budget of the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which invests in long-term poverty reduction, by 1/3. The U.S. has already promised MCC funding to several very poor countries, including the African nation of Burkina Faso, scheduled to sign a compact with the MCC in July.  Since the news, the NGO community has been advocating hard against the proposed cuts.

The result:

Last week the proposed cuts were reduced from $525 million to $58 million by a conference of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate approved the bill last night and it is now up to the President to approve.

This month, I had the privilege of traveling to Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world. 80% of the population is rural, subsistence farmers. The women I met in Burkina Faso rely on small vegetable plots to feed their families and send their children to school. The MCC’s programs would help women have access to land, help girls go to school, and improve rural roads – key strategies for reducing poverty and increasing food security. I also met with (more…)