Success Story: On the Road to Entrepreneurship and Self-Sufficiency
Building Confidence
Ms. Adja Philomen is 22 years old and lives in M’pokoi, a small village near Affery. While completing her apprenticeship in hairdressing, she looked for ways to earn extra income. She admired the independence and self-sufficiency of women cocoa famers in her area, but was afraid to start her own cocoa plot because she had no training or money for seedlings and tools. When she heard about the CLASSE program’s agricultural training for out-of-school youth, she was excited to join the group, saying:
“It’s a great pleasure for me to have come across this program. It is just as important for a woman to learn this as a man. [Women] need to know how to have a good farm, a bigger harvest, with more revenue.
That way they can take care of their families better. A lot of things have changed in my life, and I am thrilled with the idea of what I can make with all the techniques I am learning.”
Adja has been participating in the program since June 2007, and shows tremendous progress. At first she was apprehensive about being the only female in her training group, but she gradually became more confident in her abilities, saying, “Being in the group was easy; the boys did not tease me as I thought they would. So I learn just like them. We will see once we start our own cocoa plot, I may be implementing all the techniques better than some boys.”
Inspiring Women’s Entrepreneurship
Adja’s father already gave her some land to prepare her own cocoa plot. In a few months, she will graduate from the program and receive a start-up tool kit, complete with the selected, disease-resistant cocoa seedlings and tools of her choice.
“It is worth the sacrifice to pay for my transportation or sometimes walk to the training site. One feeling that I have is that, after taking part of this training, it seems that a big burden has come off me.
I am sure that in my village, people will be astonished to see me with my own cocoa plot and garden, and they’ll ask me so many questions.”
In fact, news of Adja’s success already has encouraged other young women to participate in the program. In Biéby, a single mother was introduced to the program through her village chief. She has been actively involved in the creation of her village’s garden and the cocoa plot. She is impatient to receive her start-up tool kit and now considers herself ready to start her new trade.
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