Actionaid Rwanda in partnership with Réseau des Femmes Oeuvrant pour le Développement Rural is implementing a 4-year Women’s Rights to Sustainable Livelihoods Project under the Funding for Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW) that advocates for Women’s Unpaid care work recognition and redistribution, and for increased resources for women smallholder farmers to implement sustainable agriculture that leads to improved food security hence poverty reduction. The project started in 2012 and will end by 2015.
Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW) is a new fund that has been set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands to improve the position of women and girls in developing countries. Despite global agreements on the rights, opportunities and safety of women and girls, limited progress has been made in this area and gender inequality is still widespread. This is undesirable, both from a humanitarian point of view and from the point of view of countries stability and economic health.
The project recognizes the peculiar challenges of women with respect to their engagement in unpaid care work which inhibits their ability to participate in and influence decision making as well as adopt sustainable agriculture practices. It thus seeks to enable the recognition of women’s unpaid care work and to obtain the necessary support to alleviate its inhibition on women. This, in addition to other forms of support and interventions under this project would increase women’s ability to participate in and influence decision making processes, adopt sustainable agricultural practices and to obtain increased budgetary allocation to women smallholder farmers.
The project is supporting 1,200 rwandan women smallholder farmers in Gisagara District working in groups to make their work as farmers and care givers recognized and reduce the amount of time spent on unpaid care work (unpaid care work is work to nurture family such as fetching water, cooking, collection of firewood and taking care of children and the elderly and other household activities).