In most of the FXB-Villages that take place in rural areas, agricultural activities play a large role in IGAs. Many of the FXB-Village participants live in areas where crops are grown in overused soil, making harvests smaller and more susceptible to disease and weather conditions.  In order to provide the brightest future for our participants, FXB has begun giving our beneficiaries improved and fortified seeds, depending on the soil and climate in their region, that are both disease resistant and more productive.

In Muhanga District, Rwanda, FXB has found that the most productive crops are cassava and banana trees, so our team is promoting new varieties of the plants. FXB-Village participants receive seeds, which our technicians distribute for free, and they are able to produce enough food not only for their families but their neighbors as well. Some beneficiaries have formed a co-op for cassava producers. The crops and group have been so successful that they now have a factory where they produce cassava flour for their families and community.

A new breed of banana trees in the same FXB-Village is also having remarkable results. FXB is now providing new seeds, along with training in the best ways to plant and maintain the trees. Where the old banana trees would yield around 25 kilos of bananas, now farmers are able to harvest 100 kilos. The new banana trees not only produce more fruit, but are disease resistant, giving participants more economic and food stability. Participants now have enough bananas to not only feed families but also to make a profit by selling some produce at the local market. The IGA has become so successful that FXB has set up credit for community members who want to grow the business and develop surrounding areas.

While many FXB-Village participants see the advantage to the new crops, some people are resistant to the innovation and change. FXB has found that the best way to get more people involved is by showing improved results, and with the success of the improved and fortified crops we hope to have every FXB-Village family using the new versions of bananas and cassava within two years. Many have already been convinced, and FXB staff are currently training new participants. We are looking forward to growing the program to Uganda and DR Congo quickly, with different seeds depending on the location, so that all FXB-Village participants and the surrounding communities can reap the benefits.

The power of adolescent girls to bring about real change comes from the role they play in families, and their sheer numbers. Girls are often times the backbone of rural families, working in the fields, gathering water and firewood for their families, caring for younger siblings and elderly relatives, and preparing food and handling domestic chores, and in 2009 there were 588 million of them in the world, most in developing countries.

Unfortunately, while they shoulder such large responsibilities, adolescent girls living in rural, underdeveloped nations are undervalued and, according to the report, face a ‘triple challenge’, which puts them at a unique disadvantage.  First, rural areas are often the poorest areas and generally receive the least assistance from governments, lacking roads, bridges, transportation, safe drinking water, sanitation, electricity, telephones, health care facilities and schools. While living in a rural area can be a disadvantage to everyone, adolescent girls then face two additional challenges: age and gender. Too often girls lose previously provided support during adolescence. Rural girls regularly quit school early due to their heavy workload within families. Entrenched gender roles mean boys are coveted as providers and heads of households, while girls are viewed as ‘temporary family’, not useful after marriage, which can occur at an early age. Therefor most household resources are spent on boys, who are allowed to attend school longer and potentially received better health care and larger portions of food.

It is imperative to alleviate this ‘triple challenge’ faced by adolescent girls and activate their ability to be agents of change. Providing girls with the resources they need to succeed can greatly increase the quality of life for entire families and communities, as continued support for girls can increase marriage ages, reduce work burdens, slow population growth and stop the cycle of poverty. FXB recognizes the unique position adolescent girls are in to bring about large scale improvements in poor societies, and we are proud to be providing support to girls as a large component of our comprehensive FXB-Village model.

All adolescent girls in FXB-Villages have opportunities to pursue both primary and secondary education and vocational training if formal education is no longer feasible.  They are given an active voice in household and community decision making through the creation of and involvement in youth clubs. In these clubs, girls receive training to become youth HIV prevention community advocates and peer educators, which creates safe spaces for the development of confidence, peer connections and civic leadership skills.  In addition to the information gained in youth clubs, adolescent girls – and other family members — in FXB-Villages are provided with access to health care, including counseling specifically related to HIV and other disease prevention, reproductive health and family planning options.

In an effort to keep young girls safe, FXB social work case managers visit households every two weeks and watch for signs of abuse, rape and unfair labor practices.  To facilitate broader patterns of behavior change at the community level, these social workers provide household education and awareness building around children’s rights and needs, gender roles and expectations.  With the goal of easing some of the burdens often faced by adolescent girls, FXB supports the construction of wells and works with the local community to improve infrastructure surrounding water, sanitation and educational facilities.

While we are proud of the current strides being made to protect this valuable yet vulnerable population, components of the comprehensive FXB-Village model will continue to grow and change to ensure we are fully meeting the complex needs of the families we serve.

To read the entire report: “Girls Grow: A Vital Force in Rural Economies” a Girls Count report on adolescent girls, including their recommendations for how to make adolescent girls agents of social change, click here.  For additional information on the FXB-Village model and the way we are supporting women and girls worldwide, visit us at www.FXB.org.

Why focus on young children? Science shows that the most critical brain development takes place in the first 24 months of a child’s life.  Stress factors like poverty, violence, or orphan-hood can damage this development – and the damage can never be repaired. Conversely, sound nurturing in these first years can positively affect a child’s future school performance and social development.

Unfortunately, this parental nurturing requires skills that can be lost in communities affected by war, extreme poverty, and HIV and AIDS. In response, FXB has partnered with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to provide 600 caregivers in the FXB-Village programs in Rwanda and Uganda with the tools and skills they need to bond with their children and improve their overall physical, emotional, and cognitive development.

In November 2011, nurses and social workers from FXB Rwanda and Uganda, including staff from Cyeza, participated in a five-day training in early child development. They also learned a special technique known as filial play coaching, which teaches parents to interact with and nurture their children through play.  Staff then returned to Cyeza to introduce these skills to parents in the FXB-Village.  Soon, parents were meeting once a week in their IGA groups to play with their children and to learn more.

At a recent group meeting in Cyeza, parents wove balls out of banana leaves to play toss with their toddlers while the FXB nurse coached four mothers to make eye contact with and whisper softly to their babies while breastfeeding. Two fathers from Cyeza were part of the gathering – a rare sight in a culture where men do not typically involve themselves in child-rearing. When asked about the new program, parents repeated some of the lessons that they had found most valuable to ensure their children’s future success, for example to hug children when they approached or to let children ‘help’ with preparing meals by giving them food items to sort. One mother noted that the daily play time with her children reduced her own stress levels. For their part, FXB staff have noticed that several toddlers who had been malnourished and listless are now healthier and interacting with other children in the play groups.

Through this project with the Hilton Foundation, FXB will continue to roll out these services for young children, reaching new parents and children and training parents to educate their peers. By 2013, FXB intends to reach nearly 2,000 kids and their caregivers – including children in the second Protravel FXB-Village in Kabati.

Like us on Facebook to see pictures of FXB beneficiaries participating in ECD programs.

That is not the case in many other parts of the world. In India for example many women are simply unaware of how to handle menstruation. Even if they know that it is healthier to use a tampon or pad the expense is often more than they can afford. Recent research shows that 88 percent of women in India use newspapers, bits of cloth, dried leaves, or even ashes during their period instead of pads or tampons.

These unhygienic practices lead to negative education and health outcomes for women.  A study performed by AC Neilson called “Sanitary Protection: Every Woman’s Health Right” found that adolescent girls miss an average of 5 days of school month because of their periods. 23% of girls drop out of school after they start menstruating. The lack of access to sanitary napkins has also resulted in more than 70 percent of Indian women contracting reproductive tract infections, which increases the risk of certain cancers.

Realizing that the absence of something as basic as a sanitary pad is simultaneously causing girls to drop out of school and giving them health problems that lead to cancer, FXB International began a program in a region of India that not only makes sanitary napkins available to most women, but gives many women in the area jobs. FXB’s India team taught some of the most impoverished women in the community how to make the pads, and they began sharing them with the rest of the women in their communities. Because the sanitary napkins are produced locally prices can be kept at an amount that women in the village can afford. Now girls no longer have to worry about missing school 50 days a year, women are healthier, and the women who make the pads have a steady stream of income and can provide for their families.

The French version of ELLE Magazine just published a piece on the sanitary napkin micro-enterprise run by FXB India Suraksha. To read the whole article (translated from French to English) click here.