ICLD empowers women to act

– With the empowerment from the ICLD programme we have been able to mobilize women in our community, says Farirai and Tungamirai.

Tungamirai Dube is district councillor, and Farirai Guta, Chief Executive Officer, in Manyame Rural District Council in Zimbabwe. Both are participants in the 18 months long ICLD programme “Capacitating Local Leaders in Zimbabwe”. It was in November last year, when they came back from a two week training in Sweden as part of the programme, they felt strong and secure that now was the time to act on things they had been waiting for too long.

– When we gave our report to the full council after what we had experienced in Sweden, we got a unanimous support to install a gender committee in our district council. We were able to convince them and now gender mainstreaming of the services is no longer an issue. There is a buy in for both men and women, says Tungamirai and Farirai.

– We had a medical clinic that had been ready for ten years but was not operational. We managed to mobilize both women and men to realize that women and children were the biggest beneficiaries to a local clinic instead of having to travel for miles to other clinics. Now it is operational since January! says Tungamirai and Farirai.

A third accomplishment just over the past four months is two new school blocks that really was needed in the re-settled area after he land reform were the school was under functioning.
– I was able to get the local community to donate the natural resources for building material in order to improve the school in the local area, says Tungamirai.

Facts:
The ICLD international Training Programme “Capacitating Local Leaders in Zimbabwe” is run with financing from the Swedish Embassy in Harare and in cooperation with Midland State University and Gender Links in Zimbabwe. Read more about the programme