UNDP Somalia - From destitute widow to small-scale farmer

From destitute widow to small-scale farmer

30/09/2009

Fatuma Mohammed , a 32-year-old widow and mother of 4 in Bala’d District, Middle Shabelle Region, can boast about how she has brought her family out of poverty and secured a livelihood for them.

In July 2009, once she had completed a series of trainings on land preparation, how to best use seeds and better farming practices, Fatuma was one of the first to be given eight goats under UNDP’s Area-Based Early Recovery (ABER) project. These new skills and assets gave Fatuma the chance to run her two-acre farm and actually make a living out of it.

Two years ago, when her husband died of the injuries he sustained in a bus ambush, Fatuma was left with few assets with which to support her family: she sold their cows to cover her husband’s medical expenses. She was now the head of the family, but had few options to earn an income. Fatuma worked on other farms as a casual labourer and collected and sold firewood or grass to try and make ends meet.

“Life has been hard for me since my husband died,” she states. The eight goats and the training were all it took to guarantee some income for her family and pull them out of poverty. “These goats are constant reminders that there is hope for my family because there are people in this world who care for us,” she says. “I make sure that the goats will be looked after properly.”

Two months on, Fatuma owns two additional goats, which she describes not only as an income-related asset, but also a boost to her social status: “I can go now to the village shops, for instance, and borrow a kilo of sugar for my children.”

The Area-Based Early Recovery project aims at improving productive and sustainable livelihood assets in selected regions of South Central Somalia, namely Middle Shabelle and Bay. The project is funded by the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Recovery. Read more.

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