Improving Health & Wealth

by Violet Ruria

The Mali and Burkina Faso region is one of the newest extensions of The Salvation Army in West Africa with the work in Burkina Faso having been officially opened in August 2018. There are now seven corps and eight outposts in the region.

Both Mali and Burkina Faso are recognised as two of the poorest countries in the world according to the United Nations Human Development Index. Of 189 countries listed, they ranked at number 182 and 183 respectively.

Burkina Faso is a low-income, landlocked sub-Saharan country with limited natural resources. The communities that The Salvation Army is working with identify their biggest challenges as malnutrition due to high costs of foods in the marketplace and lack of clean safe water, and food insecurity caused by recurrent droughts. In addition, women also highlight their lack of access to educational opportunities

as many are married at a very young age.

Poessin is located approximately 50 miles from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. It is in this small village, characterised by mud houses and dry dusty roads, that The Salvation Army has started a project aimed at empowering women to become self-reliant through income-generating activities.

In 2017, The Salvation Army in Burkina Faso constructed a Literacy and Skills Training Centre in the village. This serves as a space from which this local Salvation Army outpost can build relationships within the community, the majority of whom are Muslim. The Centre is also home to numerous activities such as providing literacy training to women who have never attended formal schooling, as well as health education and livelihood skills including soap-making.

Quedrougo Delfhine is one of the women I met when I visited Poessin earlier this year. She is a mother of a three-month-old daughter whom she brings along to the centre while attending her literacy and skills training classes.

Delfhine told me that she joined the project because she needed to learn how to read and write her name. During my visit to one of the literacy classes, Delfhine confidently demonstrated that she was now able to do this.

According to one of Delfhine’s teachers, Sarambe Rodrique, the functional literacy training has been very successful because it has provided an opportunity and freedom for women to learn how to read and write. He said, ‘The literacy skills provided have enabled over 80 women to know how to count money and sign receipts. This will help them when they

start their income generation businesses’. Upon completing her Level Three literacy classes, Delfhine joined the soap-making and gardening classes. She has learnt how to make soap, how to grow different types of nutritious vegetables and how to make compost. According to Delfhine, these skills have given her hope to sustain her family. She said, ‘I am now hopeful that I can soon start making soap at my home and sell in the market to earn some income to support my family’. An alternative source of income is a lifeline for families living in Poessin as minimal rainfall means providing food for the children is often a huge challenge.

Like Delfhine, Aminata joined the project to acquire literacy skills since she did not have the opportunity to attend school as a child. Once she was able to read and write, Aminata

was elected to be the record keeper for her group’s income-generation activities.

Having realised that soap was very rare in her community, Aminata saw the opportunity to learn a useful skill, and so she began attending the soap-making class at The Salvation Army outpost. Approximately 80 women in her community have now learnt how to make soap which is used for bathing as well as cleaning laundry and utensils. During markets days, women take the soap balls from the centre and sell them in the market for a small profit. They keep this profit and reimburse the capital cost back to the centre. This initiative has given women the opportunity to engage in a small business and also earn some money.

According to Captain Nana Fatouma who provides project management support to this project, soap-making was a natural choice for this community. She said, ‘We are training women to make soap as it is not locally available in this village. In the nearby shops, the price of soap is very high because most of it is imported into our country.’ Captain Fatouma explained how the project had enabled The Salvation Army to develop relationships within the community: ‘This project has enabled us to relate with the families here.’

Since the women have learned to make and sell soap, life in Poessin has improved. Aminata told me, ‘Our soap making has helped improve the health of our community since we sell it at a lower price and thus many families can afford it. Since we learnt these skills, women have started earning some income from the sale of the soap. This has enabled them to afford to buy food for their children.’

Aminata hopes that more people will be able to afford soap and that the health of those in her community will be greatly improved.

If you would like to give financially to support The Salvation Army’s income generation projects such as this one in Burkina Faso, please choose ‘Income Generation’ at the back of this magazine or visit:

www.donate.salvationarmyappeals.org.uk/ income/