Spring Appeal
The hardest months are coming. Support women to build year-round incomes.
In northern Ghana, spring is the hardest season when food and money run low as rains stop falling. During these 'lean' times, parents are often forced to make impossible choices: who eats and who waits.
It’s an experience shared by many women who produce shea butter. The revolutionary WE ACT Project (Women’s Economic Advancement for Collective Transformation) is helping to change that – providing time-saving equipment and more opportunities for women to expand their businesses.
Your donation can help WE ACT reach more women, as they work to build reliable, secure incomes.
Watch this special report from Ghana featuring Meli
“My husband has one source of income, and it’s seasonal.”
Meli, WE ACT member, Bunglung, Ghana
More about the WE ACT project
Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam
Support women accelerating their businesses to create year-round incomes
by Fati Al Hassan, WE ACT Project Coordinator and Gender Officer, Oxfam in Ghana
Meli (pictured) is one of the amazing women I’ve gotten to know well during my visits to Bunglung village. The air here is often filled with the rhythmic sound of shea nuts being pounded into shea butter by hand. It’s work that can be a valuable source of income – but it is also a slow, manual process.
Meli shared that no matter how hard she worked, “When the shea nuts were scarce, there was simply no money coming in...Those were the hardest months for me and my family.”
With training and more time, Meli has been able to join forces with other women to start a soybean farming co-operative, as well as a small business preparing and selling soybean porridge.
For Meli, this means she’s making a sustainable, reliable income all year round – enough to see her whole family through even the hardest months.
Now, I can save the money I make from shea butter because the porridge business takes care of our daily needs. With the extra income I make, I can support my husband to take care of the family.”
Meli, WE ACT member
Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam
End long walks for water
Amina is one of Meli’s neighbours at Bunglung and part of the same WE ACT-supported women’s co-operative. She told me the biggest change she’s been able to make with her new income is to bring safe water to her family home.
“Water is one of the biggest needs in my community. For a long time, I had no large water tank to store water for my household. This meant I spent hours every day fetching water to meet our needs…time I could have used productively on something else.”
With her increased profits, Amina was able to purchase three water tanks. She told me about how this simple change has completely transformed her daily routine – freeing her from the daily burden of collecting water and enabling her to spend even more time on her business.
The time saved from searching for water now allows me to spend longer hours at the market, increasing my sales and profits… [We wish] more families could experience the same transformation.”
Amina, WE ACT member
Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam
Speed up production and transport
As part of the WE ACT project, Oxfam and local partners offer small-business training and support to set up co-operatives, alongside time-saving processing equipment like shea nut milling machines and motor-tricycles for transporting goods to market.
Crucially, we also offer ‘gender-positive household’ workshops, which help to raise awareness of the need to share the burden of care work more equally across the whole family.
This combination is powering profits and freeing up women to invest more time in their businesses. The potential is huge.
Already, equipment to speed up shea production has seen some women producing three times more shea butter than before.
Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam
Back business and leadership training
It’s this powerful ripple effect that makes the WE ACT project so critical. It transforms lives far beyond the women who take part.
Along with Meli and Amina, Sadiya took part in WE ACT business skills and leadership training. As well as strengthening her to build a reliable income, it has had a major impact on the community school.
“I was chosen by my community to form a committee to support teachers and improve education for our children. I was chosen due to the skills acquired from the leadership training I received from WE ACT.”
Now a strong voice for women on the school committee, Sadiya is speaking up for women and girls’ priorities whenever important decisions are made. This is vital as too many girls miss out on education, often expected to work at home or on family farms especially when money is in short supply.
Three essential ways your donation can help
£25
Speed up production and boost incomes with modern equipment such as milling machines and motor-tricycles shared by women’s co-ops.
£50
Simple local water storage that ends the burden of long walks for water, so women have more time to build year-round incomes.
£80
Business and leadership training so more women can build secure, reliable family incomes and ensure more girls stay in school.
Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam
When the shea nuts were scarce, there was simply no money coming in. Those were the hardest months for me and my family.”
Meli, WE ACT member, Bunglung, Ghana.
For every £1 Oxfam spends*
is spent fighting poverty
is spent on vital support costs.
goes towards raising the next £1
Every donation fights the causes and consequences of poverty
Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam