Where is the Women’s Empowerment Project Headed?

By Carlos Arenas
WCCN’s Executive Director

WCCN is proud to commemorate 15 years working in microfinance and is no less proud of its work with the Nicaraguan women’s movement during the last 16 years. In fact, the Women’s Empowerment Project (WEP), is WCCN’s longest-running program. It was initiated in May 1990 following a delegation to Nicaragua focusing on the work of “Casas de la Mujer” (Women’s Centers). In this article I would like to provide an overview of what we have accomplished over the years and elaborate on where WEP is currently headed.

A little background

Prior to 1990, WCCN had not been very involved in women’s issues in Nicaragua. For example, before launching WEP, WCCN’s newsletter had published only one article on women in Nicaragua. The Spring 1991 edition of WCCN’s newsletter Sister State Update announced the creation of WEP. The original goals and main objectives of WEP were the following:

1) To build a lasting relationship between North American and Nicaraguan women;
2) To promote empowerment of U.S. and Nicaraguan women so that they may continue to play a decisive role in the democratic process and participate in the equitable development of our communities; and
3) To inform women nationwide of the current situation of women in Nicaragua.

Toward these ends, the objectives of the project include:
• To provide technical assistance, financial, material, and moral support to Nicaraguan women’s centers and other initiatives of Nicaraguan women;
• To publish reports and research related to the work of the Women’s Empowerment Project and the situation in Nicaragua;
• To link women’s centers or groups in the U.S. with counterparts in Nicaragua;
• To host educational visits by Nicaraguan women to the United States;
• To organize delegations of North American women to Nicaragua to exchange ideas, share experiences and establish new relationships.

In June 1992, when the women’s delegation launched the “Campaign Against Domestic Violence”, this issue became the main focus of WEP for the next ten years. The aim of the campaign was to “exchange information and develop strategies and concrete solutions to turn the tide of violence against women.” Even though the issue of financial support to Nicaraguan women’s organizations was not the main objective of WEP, the reality was that the project created an ambiguous situation on this topic that generated some confusion and frustration. To clarify the main purpose of WEP, a new mission statement was made public at the end of 1994, which has since remained unchanged. It stated the following:
“The purpose of the Women’s Empowerment Project is to build a lasting relationship between North American and Nicaraguan women, to promote the empowerment of U.S. and Nicaraguan women so that they may continue to play a decisive role in the democratic process and participate in the equitable development of our communities, and to inform women nationwide of the situation of women in Nicaragua.”

Main highlights of WEP

During the first nine years of WEP, our work focused on three women’s collectives from Managua: Ocho de Marzo, Xochilt, and Itza. The work of these groups was a combination of health, legal and psychological services for women in some of Managua’s poorest neighborhoods. Originally, these groups worked under a single umbrella called the Inter-
Collective but later decided to separate and become independent from each other. However, in 1999 Nicaragua was hit by the worst hurricane in over a century and the needs of women changed drastically. WCCN started working with the Network of Women Against Violence, which serves as a national umbrella organization for most of the women’s groups. Between 1999 and 2001, our work with the Network focused on emotional recovery after the trauma caused by Hurricane Mitch. During the last five years, WCCN has expanded the number of contacts and carries out small projects with other women’s groups. However, little by little WCCN has been learning more and collaborating with women’s groups working in rural areas. As a result, we have found that women’s access to economic resources would be the main topic for redefining WEP’s focus, as we will elaborate in the last section of this article.

WCCN’s annual study tours that focus on women’s issues have been the “umbilical cord” that has kept WEP connected with the Nicaraguan women’s movement over the years. WCCN has organized seventeen study tours focused on women’s issues. The counterpart of those exchanges has been inviting Nicaraguan women to the U.S. to exchange experiences and learn from their struggles. To date, WCCN has hosted at least 29 Nicaraguan women’s leaders and/or members of Nicaraguan women’s organizations, and some have returned more than once. WEP has also developed an extensive number of activities and projects in solidarity with the Nicaraguan women’s movement.

Many positive things could be mentioned about WEP, however, I would like to highlight only three; first, WEP has always had a feminist approach to women’s issues. It is important to emphasize that even though WCCN is not a women’s organization, it is deeply committed to women’s struggles against gender inequalities in Nicaragua and elsewhere. In that sense, WCCN’s approach to women’s issues has always gone beyond simply working with Nicaraguan women, but has also worked from a feminist perspective. I think that this is one of the main legacies of WEP that should be valued, maintained and developed further in the years to come.

Second, WEP has been fortunate to accompany the Autonomous Women’s Movement since its inception. Even though WEP’s partnership originally focused on three women’s groups, it has always maintained an interest on the Nicaraguan women’s movement as a whole. For many years this was made possible by the fact that Madisonian Donna Vuckelich was WCCN’s representative in Nicaragua. For instance, “United in Diversity,” the national gathering of Nicaraguan women, which is considered the birthplace of the autonomous women’s movement, was attended by Donna for WCCN in May 1992. Finally, WCCN has built a unique network of contacts with and knowledge of the Nicaraguan women’s movement. Over the years, WCCN has developed close relationships with women’s organizations at the national level, such as the Network of Women Against Violence, the National Feminist Committee, and the Autonomous Women’s Movement. At the same time, WCCN has developed relationships with local collectives and groups in Managua, León, Estelí, Matagalpa, Chinandega, Malpaisillo, Rio Blanco and Mulukuku.

A niche for WCCN in women’s issues

Despite all our valuable work on women’s issues during the last 16 years, we have concluded that until now WCCN does not have a specific niche that could identify us as significant contributors in this area. As a result, WCCN’s board recently adopted the topic of women’s access to economic resources as a topic to become WEP’s niche. Additionally, WCCN will continue supporting the overall struggles of the Nicaraguan women’s movement and will continue to address the issue of violence against women. However, WCCN will focus its energies on combating domestic violence through facilitating women’s control of economic resources. Our main contribution will be through the demonstrative effect of “pilot projects” and WCCNs reflections on those topics and experiences.
The idea is that the topic of women’s access to economic resources will be subdivided in three main issues: women’s access to credit, women’s access to land, and women’s access to income-generating activities.

Promoting women’s access to credit:

The NICA Fund has among its values a special emphasis on allowing women the opportunity to have access to credit. As a result, WCCN has developed a system to periodically measure the percentage of borrowers by gender, including the amount of money that each gender receives from each NICA Fund partner agency. As part of this effort to promote awareness on the importance of allowing women to have access to credit under equal conditions to men, WCCN’s social impact study that is currently underway will have a chapter dedicated to shedding more light on the issue. In this way, WCCN aims to be a leading force on this issue, providing the necessary data to promote this topic within the microfinance industry in Nicaragua.

Facilitating women’s access to land:

WCCN has approached the issue of women’s access to land in different ways. First, we began learning more about the topic directly from women’s organizations in Nicaragua working on this topic. As a result, the last three WEP study tours have focused on this issue, allowing us to visit and establish direct contact with most of the women’s organization facilitating land access to women as part of their women’s empowerment process.

WCCN has also tried to learn more from people working on this topic at an academic level, as well as from government officials working in this area. For this reason in the Summer of 2006, WCCN organized a panel at the Midwest Social Forum on this topic and invited two Nicaraguan experts, Sonia Agurto, director of the research organization FIDEG, and Patricia Hernández, the head of the Gender Unit at the Rural Titling Office. Last year, WCCN also organized another panel on this topic during the annual conference of the North Central Council of Latin Americanists (NCCLA) held at Marian College in Fon Du Lac, WI. For that event WCCN invited Juana Delia Rojas, from the Xochilt-Acalt Women’s Center in Malpaisillo, who is in charge of the process of promoting land titles among the members of her organization.

WCCN has partnered with the Comité de Mujeres Rurales (CMR), located in the Nicaraguan city of León to facilitate access to land to some of the landless women who have been working with this organization in the process of empowerment. As a result, WCCN has raised funds to buy 5 acres of land. Currently, the CMR is looking for the land to be purchased. The idea behind the purchase of this land is to design a mechanism that allows us to transfer that land over a period of time to the beneficiaries using a small rotating fund. If the project is successful, it could become a model to be extended to other groups.

As a step forward in this project in the coming year, WCCN will be working to elaborate a study on the impact of access to land and housing on levels of domestic violence in Nicaragua. The idea is to replicate a pioneer study based in India, which demonstrated that women’s access to land and housing contribute significantly to ending domestic violence. In this project WCCN is working in collaboration with Shelly Grabe, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will lead the project. Through this study we aim to work collaboratively with the Nicaraguan Network of Women Against Violence, the Xochilt-Acalt Women’s Center from Malpaisillo, and the
research organization FIDEG.

Contributing to women’s access to income-generating activities:

WCCN has concluded that one very useful way to contribute to the efforts of Nicaraguan women’s organizations that have income-generating activities as part of their women’s empowerment programs is by facilitating contacts with other groups in the U.S. For instance, last June during the WEP study tour we visited, for the second time, the women’s organization Fundación Entre Mujeres in the city of Estelí. This group is one of the few women’s organizations in Nicaragua that has included the issue of access to land as part of their women’s empowerment process. Women from some of the communities are working as coffee producers and have been trying to get into the fair trade market.
During the meeting with our delegation, it was evident that the main way to support them was by locating buyers of their organic coffee. WCCN contacted Just Coffee, a coffee roaster based in Madison, and explained to them the importance of supporting this cooperative of feminist coffee producers. WCCN also transported a sample of beans for Just Coffee. As a result of this effort, Just Coffee visited the cooperative in early November, and they are now in the process of closing a deal to purchase their coffee for distribution in the U.S. (see article on the next page by Matt Early).
As you can see, all these ambitious ideas are built on the experience and cumulative knowledge that WEP has developed over the last 16 years. WCCN is committed to use the NICA Fund’s successful experience to leverage WCCN’s other projects that for several reasons had been left behind or shaded by the scale of our fund. With your support we will be able to succeed and expand the number of WEP’s achievements.