Program areas at CREATE
Create collaborates with women in rural senegal to help them build a sustainable future for their families as they cope with water, food, and fuel shortages resulting from the impacts of climate change on their communities. Our projects help women build economic self-sufficiency through access to abundant and affordable clean water using Renewable solar Energy and training in organic agriculture, poultry raising, community savings and lending strategies, and other income generating activities. Over the past twelve years, Create has partnered with nineteen communities in the fatick, kaolack, and louga regions of rural senegal to respond to felt needs, foster economic resiliency, increase food security, and build capacity while helping men and women on the path towards self-sufficiency. Our projects address basic needs in our partner villages by providing access to abundant and affordable water through solar power, so that cooperative members are able to grow a wide variety of nutritious vegetables year-round for the first time ever in desert-like conditions. Local production of fresh vegetables improves health and nutrition in the community and provides new and expanded economic opportunities. Cooperative members are able to supplement household income and support their families through the sale of vegetables in local markets. In addition to providing this training, Create field technicians also help cooperative members develop skills in the care, management, and marketing of poultry. As a result, women are able to diversify their families' diets and increase their incomes. Create field technicians also help cooperative members begin to save profits from their cooperative community gardens through the establishment of voluntary savings and lending associations (vslas). Association members are able to use these groups to save a portion of the profits they earn both from participating in Create's cooperative community garden and poultry projects as well as any other enterprise they start with the training from Create. They also learn to reinvest those savings into other income generating activities to produce community-based, cooperative change. Our field technicians also teach women to construct and use fuel-efficient clay-sand cookstoves made from free, local materials. These cookstoves reduce firewood consumption by up to 70 percent. Create field technicians also work with community volunteers to restore lost forest resources through annual tree planting campaigns. Our project participants plant thousands of tree seedlings each year for food production, living fences, and local reforestation. Women and girls no longer need to walk long distances to collect firewood for cooking, thereby freeing time, reducing labor, and increasing the likelihood that girls will be able to remain in school. Create continues to expand its impact in rural senegal, training dozens of communities each year in the construction of fuel-efficient cookstoves and extending its fully integrated program of water, food production, Energy conservation and income generation to two new communities. In 2023, we continued our participatory program activities in all of our partner communities including continued training in the 9 active communities as well as periodic monitoring of our graduated communities with the following outcomes. Each of the 9 active communities produced more than 250 pounds of nutritious fruits and vegetables. the production of such a variety of fruits and vegetables resulted in 100% of the women in the age range of 15-49 achieving minimum dietary diversity, and indicator that measures nutritional diversity. Each woman participant of our program saved 35 every month in their voluntary savings and lending associations (vslas).