Interview With Jacqueline Ogega Moturi
Want to know more about what women of faith are doing in Africa?
As the Project Director what do you do?
My job is to grow and constitute the network and establish and equip the African women of Faith Network. In two year's time, we have registered four hundred women's organizations as members. These organizations range from formal to informal, from grassroots to national. We have been able to document these organizations and create profiles of who they are and what they do.
What does the network do?
Some of the work we do addresses conflict, reconstruction in post-conflict areas, HIV/AIDS, and poverty. The object of the network is to mobilize women of faith around issues of peace. And I mean peace in broad terms, not just the absence of war, but living honorably, dying in peace, and not starving.
Women of faith are well suited for it because they are caregivers, focus on the family, and transmit peace values over generations. Their maternal gift is resolving violence without conflict.
We are not starting from scratch. There are already women doing something for their local areas. We want to expand their existing work and equip them with resources that will get more help to more people. To scale out their already successful practices, we build the capacity to do it better. We also create partnerships between groups who can help each other.
What kinds of services do these member organizations offer?
They offer significant support for orphans, nutritional support for the hungry, informal training, both formal and informal counseling, and peace building amongst others. Many of these organizations do self fundraising around issues, while others work without external funding. The work of these women is critical. They are doing community-based prevention and mediation.
What are some of the challenges faced?
The challenge is that these women are not in the mainstream and are not visible at the leadership level where they are needed in decision making and promoting critical values. Gender mainstreaming must happen at all levels. Women can shed light on decisions and policies involving work they are doing but there is a lack of confidence to join. This confidence must be built and their space must be claimed so we must involve them.
According to the gender roles in Africa, it is the responsibility of women to take care of these problems. Therefore they are ignored and invisible. This is why they are having such a hard time accessing resources.
We must recognize that men and women are affected differently and women are affected more drastically by war, poverty, HIV/AIDs, etc.. Therefore, their needs are different. Women face the trauma of rape, sexual slavery, child motherhood moreover, orphaned families headed by girls are more vulnerable. Female orphans are more disadvantaged because they take care of the family and therefore are more likely to skip out on school, are prone to facing sexual abuse, and are generally part of unsecured child-headed homes. And if an extended family member decides to support an orphan family they are more likely to support a male child-headed family because girls get married. Thus, they are more vulnerable than male orphans. Staff must understand these gender realities in Africa.
How can we in the U.S. help?
With all the resources available here partnerships would be very beneficial for scaling out the successful programs. We can use technical, material, and financial aid. In addition, advocating for our cause will bring us from invisible to visible. Tangible support to scale up projects and fundraising is important. There should be solidarity between women of faith. They should link up, network, and support the initiative undertaken in Africa.
Women are needed in leadership, so they can bring in their perspectives at top leadership levels. Women need to participate at that high level, and not just remain at the grassroots level, so that their perspectives can be critical and that is why we mobilize women of faith so they can participate in the mainstream.
These women of faith mean for RFP that we don't have to start from scratch, if we want to support HIV/AIDS initiatives there are women already doing it. But how can we scale it out, how can we provide technical perspectives, how can we build capacity and that is the partnership I seek for RFP.
We have to enhance the work that they are doing and a partnership with RFP-USA will be useful for advocating on behalf of these women who are doing great work. But they need resources, material, technical, and financial support. They need to scale out whatever they are doing and I'm sure if we did that we can make a real difference.
Principles of solidarity, networking, exchange visits to see the reality in Africa, women of faith in the U.S. should come into contact with women of faith in Africa, and, if they are in the position to support some of the initiatives there, it would be very commendable. Senior religious leaders and other agencies in the U.S. can promote their work through advocacy. As it is right now, they are working invisibly. Because it's their role to be caretakers, their work is masked, and what that means is that its not so easy for them to access resources. Because this is how gender roles are defined in Africa.
Could you give examples of some of the projects?
For example, in the context of HIV/AIDS the women of faith have a lot of support for orphans and vulnerable children. They do a lot of home-based care for those who are chronically ill. They provide nutritional support, informal training, and education around HIV/AIDS, counseling, and psychosocial support. Some organizations have been able to fundraise around issues to train and educate formally and others have been doing it informally without external funding.
Around issue of peace for example, the women in northern Uganda have made peace committees in the community and have dialogue with other women to explore: how they can support peace initiatives as women of faith; how they can teach their children and spouses so peace can be sustained; what kind of prevention can be done in order to avoid conflict; or, now that we have conflict; how can we ensure constructive development. There are many, many things women of faith do but it depends on the context and its not homogenous. They could be doing peace work, HIV/AIDS, etc. They could also be doing their own income-generating activities in order to enhance the issue of poverty. They may form informal micro-credit initiatives which they call merry-go-round, which enables them to save but also to borrow/lend to meet challenges and touch up some income related activity. That work can be critical, it may be grassroots but we can build on that indigenous knowledge that they have.
In Burundi, we had a general training on peace building. We also looked at the gender dimensions of peace building and the fact that women are very good at building peace, but they are never in the upper levels of peace building processes and structures. So doing gender analysis of the realities of the field, e.g., how interreligious councils can be structured in ways in which they can mainstream women will be helpful. We have also been establishing a baseline on some of the gender needs, and have been able to build some of the multireligious structures for gender based on the data that we've been looking at in the past two years.
Do you find that the trend is that people think women should deal with their own issues?
Yes, we're even trying to build capacity for that. So we may be able to understand that when trying to address issues of gender within various contexts, what makes it hard for men to see their role is that you will find that much of the time they will be talking more about women, and the reason for that is because they are more vulnerable. So the men feel as though they are not visible, and it seems to be a women's issues. But the issues that effect women eventually affect the whole community. For example, in war areas, the men are the ones taking women into sexual slavery, so when sexual slavery effects women more, but its men who are taking them into it and have to come out of that mentality. A lot of senior religious leaders are men and it should be a shared obligation to mainstream gender and gain women's representation. So I see it as a partnership: men and women working together rather than women themselves doing everything.
Information on the Africa Women of Faith Network is found on Religion for Peace's Website.
