Income Generating Activities:
Living within an impoverished rural community sustained largely by subsistence agriculture and bartering, one grows in awareness of the difficulties of the local people to acquire cash income. While many of their food and housing needs can indeed be met in the rural villages through growing their own produce or cutting their own thatching grass, there are some basic needs that require ready cash such as clothing and school requirements. Giving ‘hand-outs’ is not the answer as it cultivates an attitude of dependency and undermines the dignity of the person. ‘Piece-work’ or casual labour is not always in abundant supply within an already impoverished community such as Lukulu. Therefore some of our recent initiatives are to encourage and develop ‘Income Generating Activities’ or IGAs among some of the women with whom we work.
The HEPS Project (described elsewhere – follow the link below for details), is partially an IGA which has been going for some years now, although due to the expense of some of the ingredients requires ongoing subsidization to make it worthwhile for the women engaged.
In recent months another group of women have started a fish pond for fish farming, which apart from augmenting their own food security will allow for selling of fish especially through the closed season for river fishing.
More recently we sent a group of 8 women off to Mongu for 4 days training in other IGA activities based under the broad category of ‘farming’. They learnt about such things as Vaseline-making and Soap Production from mainly local ingredients, as well as village chicken rearing and compost production. They have now begun to engage in some of these activities in Lukulu in the hope of earning income for themselves as well as passing on the knowledge to others. Follow the links below for more information about the respective IGAs.
HEPS Fish Pond Vaseline Production
Soap Production Village Chicken Rearing