Posts tagged Women Deliver

Access to sustainable energy empowers Senegalese women

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 23.06.2020 (IPS): Aïssata Ba, 45-year-old widow and mother of seven children, has been practising market gardening for the past 30 years in Lompoul Sur Mer village in the Niayes area of north-west Senegal. For many women in the village, endowed with fertile soil and favourable climate, it is the primary source of income throughout the year.

But lack of infrastructure, access to sustainable energy, financial support, equipment and knowledge of modern practices makes it a hard toil for these women engaged in market gardening, which is small-scale production of fruits, vegetables, flowers and cash crops during the local growing season and sold directly to consumers.

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How Vanuatu women are responding to climate change

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 20.04.20 (IPS): Sitting atop a banyan tree branch, Fiona Robyn had a cell phone tightly clasped in her fist raised high to get a signal. She was impatiently waiting for the SMS weather alert from the Women Wetem Weta (Women’s Weather Watch – WWW) hub in Port Vila as cyclone TC Harold raged towards the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean on 5th April.

No sooner had she received the message, Robyn, a WWW leader in Eton on the eastern coast of Efate island in Vanuatu, immediately swung into action. She began mobilising other women and youth to help widows, the physically challenged and older people secure their roofs, store food and clean water, secure documents in air tight containers, and move those in unsafe houses to the local school serving as an evacuation centre.

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