WODSTA's members are drawn from various fields including education, agriculture, community and gender development, which provides a large pool of knowledge in dealing with the complexities of women's development issues. Although our projects and activities vary depending on the demand of our members, the emphasis is always focused on the grass roots women and girl children in marginalized communities. Our philosophy of improving the status and position of women through addressing gender, environmental conservation, economic empowerment, and appropriate technology issues is carried out through the following activities:
WOMEN'S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
CIVIC AND VOTER EDUCATION
URBAN ENERGY INITIATIVES
INTERMEDIARY GENDER NETWORK (IGN)
GIRL CHILD PROGRAM
FOOD PROCESSING, PRESERVATION & ORGANIC FARMING
WOMENS SOCIO-ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM
For the past three years, WODSTA has been addressing poverty reduction through the social and economic empowerment of pastoral women in Northern Tanzania's Maasai land. Currently we are running a program in three districts of Maasai communities: Monduli in the Arusha region and Kiteto in the Manyara region. Together with our coalition partners, WODSTA helps small groups of women to join together and establish women's economics groups. We train these groups on skills of accounting, product marketing, processing, business management, leadership, cost analysis, and group facilitation. In addition gender sensitization and literacy skills are offered to build their capacities. Our goal is to give marginalized Maasai women the skills to generate their own income and build sustainable economic alternatives within their community. At the moment we have organized 55 groups of women who have petty businesses that range from jewelry design to bean, maize and produce production.
WODSTA was among several Civil Society Organizations (CSO's) chosen to implement a Civic and Voter Education program in Tanzania during the 2005 election. Our target group included young urban women between the ages of 18 and 25, illiterate women in rural areas, and women living in rural areas who had a limited understanding of their civic and voter rights. The objectives of the program were to encourage voter participation in the 2005 election, to develop voter awareness of the democratic process, and to improve women's understanding and involvement in the election process. We trained various ward-level facilitators to share information with other residents through using posters, educational literature, presentation sessions, participatory discussion, and songs/drama where applicable. The program closed with the culmination of the election while WODSTA was able to reach out to over 100% of our targeted population. We realize this work is important in every community and we look forward to being involved in civic and voter education work in the future.
Women Development for Science and Technology puts much of its energy and resources into providing affordable and appropriate technology solutions to it's members and to the communities with whom we work. We train women on how to build wonder baskets (insulated cooking baskets), energy efficient stoves, double burning stoves, and biogas tanks. We also provide information on comparative fuel use and help communities to have access to alternative fuels such as used kerosene and bio fuels. WODSTA currently works with KIDT to produce compact sawdust briquettes for cooking and heating in the home; a solution to the growing consumption and rising prices of firewood in Tanzania. The next step of our Urban Energy Initiative will be the construction and opening of three Energy Resource Centers where WODSTA and community members can visit to learn about energy consumption, appropriate technology, and attend workshops on how to build their own energy saving appliances such as wonder baskets and mud stoves while collaborating with others on solutions to local energy problems.
INTERMEDIARY GENDER NETWORK (IGN)
The Intermediary Gender Network (IGN) of Arusha is a development of the Tanzanian Gender Network Forum. The forum is meant to be a place where men, women, activists, and the public at large come together to discuss and plan actions that address emerging social, political, and economic issues related to gender. This National forum is celebrated every two years at the Tanzanian Gender Festival in Dar es Salaam and WODSTA is the coordinating organization responsible for carrying out similar work in Arusha. The Arusha IGN will include the idea of weekly Seminar Forums, the coordination of gender associated organizations, combined lobbying efforts, and the exchange of information and experience. It is hopeful that the Arusha IGN will celebrate it's own Gender Festival in the coming years!
The girl child program was an initiative of WODSTA to help educate and improve the self-esteem of girl children in the Arusha region. WODSTA designed a curriculum to work with local teachers and schools through which we initiated discussions of values, goals, and self respect of women in Tanzanian society. The girl students were introduced to successful and inspiring role models and received a chance to participate in afterschool and community oriented activities that celebrated women and girls alike. The curriculum falls within the school terms and we look forward to future work with girl children throughout Arusha.
FOOD PROCESSING, PRESERVATION, AND ORGANIC FARMING
As WODSTA has been at the forefront in the promotion of income generating projects for women, we also strive to use our knowledge in organic fruits and vegetable processing to generate income. We supply educational resources and demonstrate the benefits of organic and bio-intensive (the use of traditional farming practices such as seed transplanting, double dug and multiple crop garden beds and organic composting to produce vegetables without chemical pesticides or fertilizers) farming techniques to our members and throughout local communities. Using these methods we then work with women's groups in the Arumeru district to harvest, process and dry their food products using communally built solar food dryers. Our program goes on to give community trainings on packaging, labeling, and marketing techniques, as well as training the group members in accounting and record keeping.