Women’s Empowerment Project Launches in Zambia’s Northern Province
USAID and Nascent Solutions successfully launched project WEAVE in Zambia’s Northern Province, with the goal of reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS, using a multi-sectoral approach. 18 months into implementation, WEAVE ( Women Empowered to fight Aids and Violence Everywhere) is on track to meet or exceed the key project objectives of:
- Increasing the ability of 12000 HIV/AIDS infected women in Mpika district to start and run economically successful and sustainable small businesses.
The communities in Mpika, the target district, experience acute levels of poverty and illiteracy and live primarily by subsistence farming, surviving from harvest to harvest on meagre food crops in addition to harvesting edible caterpillars and producing charcoal for sale. To help improve the income outlook for the region’s inhabitants, WEAVE has trained 60 Empowerment Volunteers of the 60 targeted for the life of the project. 
These volunteers have facilitated the establishment of 306 women’s groups, comprising 5,705 members. And together these groups have achieved total savings amounting to K31, 863,200 ($6,613.52) in their village banks. The women are now able to borrow money from their village banks, and invest the funds to finance small businesses. Many have used the opportunity to start businesses making and selling shawls, doormats, opening up grocer stands and many other businesses that increase their income potential and make them less likely to sell off their meager food crop and jeopardize their food security and livelihood in an attempt to meet financial needs. As a whole the communities have embraced the project with much happiness and dedication, with many women, enduring harsh rains and washed out roads, in the rainy season, in order to make their group meetings.
The second and essential objective of WEAVE in Mpika, of providing nutritional support to 1,500 malnourished children under age 5, has been attained and exceeded with nutritional support going to over 1,536 children so far. 
This has been achieved through the provision HEPS (High Energy Protein Supplements) and the utilization of the Positive Deviance Hearth Model, to nurture and help reintegrate malnourished children into the community. However the need is still acute and overwhelming, even while Nascent staff and local volunteers continue their work in the region to create a lasting impact. So far over 100 children have been weaned off the program having been brought from a malnourished state to a healthy baseline. In spite of this progress there are still challenges. Malnutrition is a difficult condition to completely reverse and coupled with the scarcity of food in the local communities the rehabilitation and reintegration process for many of the children has been slow. However, despite these obstacles 62% of the reported children gained weight while in the program an indication of improvement.
Because the meager agricultural crop the children’s families produce often lacks the variety of food types and nutrient value needed to sustain the child’s health after weaning from the program, Nascent is working to link the existing nutrition groups with existing government structures, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, via their extension officers. The objective of this is to partner with Zambian government institutions to create family kitchen gardens, that will have nutrient variety and be able to meet and sustain the food requirements of the children and families as a whole. So far it is heartening and encouraging to see the tide start to turn and witness the emergence of stronger healthier children from the program, while looking ahead to establishing the necessary structures for sustainable nutrition and general children’s health in the region.