PVO transforms lives of Lupane women
By Thembelihle Mhlanga
Ntengwe For Development, a registered private voluntary organisation that facilitates community development through skills capacitating and evidence based advocacy and groups’ savings for assets amassing, has come to the aid of villagers in Lupanda and Simunyu areas in Lupane. The PVO has achieved this feat by imparting necessary skills for poverty alleviation.
Simunyu and Lupanda areas fall under arid land. The plight of villagers in the area is compounded by very low income.
However, through its programme on advocacy and lobbying, the organization has capacitated the rural women bringing about remarkable change in their lives.
As a result of the capacity building courtesy of Ntengwe For Development, the women in these areas came up with their own innovation effort of water shortage mitigation by pooling resources together to finance the digging of wells that led to the establishment of nutrition gardens that are now producing food for their families.
One community beneficiary of this project, Iren Msebele told Community Podium that, since the intervention of the organization,the women’s lives have been hugely transformed economically as they have become more independent.
“In the past we would ask for almost everything from our husbands, but since the coming of Ntengwe who taught us to be productive in our households, we are scaling up our domestic input” said Msebele
She said as women from Lupanda and Block O, they have managed to fundraise and save money. Moreover, they have also managed to mitigate the water shortage by digging their own wells that have seen them growing nutritional gardens, thus improving household food security and livelihood.
An upbeat Ntengwe official, Mr Thandolwenkosi Ndlovu has also paid tribute to the initiative, adding that women in Lupanda ward have managed to buy household utensils and goats thanks to the capacity building.
“After our intervention as an organization, we have seen women from this area buying goats and household utensils from their savings unlike in the past when they had to be totally dependant on their husbands, rendering them so vulnerable to abuse”, said Ndlovu.
Through the assistance from Ntengwe the local women are acquainting themselves to ways of accumulating asserts putting paid to ancient systems that only projected men as the sole property owners.
