Investing in Women: WEEMA Celebrates International Women's Day!

Investing in Women: WEEMA Celebrates International Women's Day!

WEEMA celebrates women on International Women's Day this Friday, March 8th just like we do every day: by investing in women as agents of change. We recognize that creating opportunity for women is beneficial to everyone; when women succeed, they improve the lives of their families and their communities.

Here's a glimpse at how WEEMA invests in women:

Water for Women

Water needs are what inspired WEEMA's founding, and at the heart of the story is water as a woman's issue. The arduous journey to fetch water from water points to households often falls upon women and can eat up hours of each day, interfering with women and girls' time, and girls' ability to attend school. By constructing accessible water points that bring clean, fresh water to communities, WEEMA is helping more girls go to school.

Discover the story of Alemitu, a woman living outside of Mudula who would make the two-hour trip to get water for cooking, washing and drinking twice daily before WEEMA built the Farsuma water point. “Now I can get water any time to wash clothes, clean my house and bathe my children.” 

Safe Pregnancy and Deliveries

WEEMA sponsored the education of five midwives at Hamlin College of Midwifery from 2011-2017. These midwives provided high levels of care to pregnant women in rural health centers and trained other health workers at the posts to spread best practices for keeping pregnant women and babies safe. 

WEEMA’s Self Help Groups

WEEMA has helped to found and now helps facilitate 112 Women's Self with 2,073 women in rural Ethiopia. Each Self Help Group consists of 20 women and meets weekly to save money together, make loans for business and personal expenses, to share experiences, provide social support to each other. 

Keeping Girls in School

WEEMA works, through comprehensive education, to break the stigma of menstruation and provides sanitary pads for girls to continue attending school when they are menstruating. Under this program, WEEMA recently distributed 450 resuable pads to girls in Samura Primary School and have donated an additional 150 for future distribution.

Economic Opportunity

Beekeeping is a profitable industry in Ethiopia, one that has traditionally been considered exclusively a male career path. WEEMA beekeeping training and initiatives have made beekeeping much more accessible and currently 50 of our 135 beekeepers are women.

WEEMA restores vision to over 900 cataract patients!

Two patients from this year’s Cataract Campaign wait to receive surgery at Hossana Hospital.

WEEMA wrapped up this year's 5th Annual Cataract Campaign by celebrating successfully restoring vision to 954 patients and performing surgery on a total of 975 eyes! 

Hundreds of patients journeyed to Hosanna Hospital last week to receive cataract surgery and regain independence in their every day lives. As patients arrived with caregivers, WEEMA staff and partners performed pre-surgery procedures before guiding them to the operating room. The first procedure began Monday morning and the surgeries continued through Friday afternoon until every patient received care.

The highlight of the campaign was the joy and excitement in patients’ eyes each morning as their bandages were removed. These surgeries make it possible for those living with cataracts to once again read, walk to the market, and cook meals without assistance. 

WEEMA staff is thankful for our amazing partnerships with Himalayan Cataract Project, Hosanna Hospital, and Hadiya Ministry of Health. This campaign would not have been such a success without our partners and all the volunteers that dedicated their time to help. As this year's campaign comes to an end we are excited to share some of the amazing stories of individuals we were lucky to meet in upcoming WEEMA Wednesdays.

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Photos from WEEMA’s 5th Annual Cataract Campaign in Hossana, Ethiopia

Higa Boarding School Library

Higa Boarding School Library before…

…and after WEEMA International provided supplies and materials.

Setting Students up for Success at Higa Boarding School

Higa Boarding School was opened in 2017 to improve the quality of education in Kembata-Tembaro Zone and to encourage students to complete secondary education. Since that time, they've staffed highly qualified teachers and recruited a student body of 164 high-achieving students who come from across Kembata-Tembaro, based on high scores on national eighth grade exams.

The only thing that was missing to set students up for success? Library materials! That's where WEEMA's support comes in.

WEEMA has provided desks, chairs, computers, laboratory equipment and reference materials to Higa Boarding School to ensure that students have the tools they need to succeed.

The Vice Principal said that ''WEEMA, as [the meaning of] its name suggests, made our school full through the support of school furniture, computers, laboratory equipment, reference books and technical support.''

To learn more about this work and receive regular updates, follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and sign up for our newsletters.  

WEEMA Sets Sights on Treating Over 1,000 Cataracts

Hosanna Hospital Eye Clinic team identified 1,053 candidates to receive cataract surgery during pre-screening in January

Imagine waking up one morning, after years spent in darkness, knowing that this was the day you were going to see the face of your son, your daughter, or parents again.

WEEMA is making this dream a reality for hundreds of people in Hossana, Ethiopia. WEEMA's 5th Annual Cataract Campaign, in partnership with Himalayan Cataract Project, Hosanna Hospital, and Hadiya Ministry of Health, will perform over 1,000 surgeries over the course of a week, restoring sight and the everyday freedom that comes with clear vision. 

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide and are treatable with surgery which replaces the clouded lens of the eye with an artificial one.

Hosanna Hospital Eye Clinic team pre-screened candidates and identified 1,053 individuals, from children to adults, who need cataract surgery- 56 of these patients are currently blind in both eyes. These surgeries make it possible for those living with cataracts to once again read, walk to the market, or cook meals without assistance.

To join us on this journey, follow us on Facebook & Instagram where we will be sharing daily updates from our 2019 Cataract Campaign!

Stakeholders discuss the 2018 Cataract Campaign's lessons learned and plans for the 2019 Cataract Campaign

Equipping & Training Healthcare Professionals

Having the right tools at your disposal is critical, but knowing how to use them transforms the quality of healthcare that medical professionals can provide.

Twenty-two biomedical technicians, surgeons, midwives, nurses and laboratory technicians gathered around their instructor at Shinshicho Hospital for their first training session to learn about new equipment provided by a collaboration between WEEMA and the International Medical Equipment Collaborative (IMEC),  a US-based nonprofit organization specializing in providing medical equipment to advance standard of care in health facilities in low resource settings.

Over the course of ten days, this team of healthcare professionals will learn to assemble, maintain, and operate key equipment that will:

• Enable safer C-sections and new major surgical services

• Allow healthcare workers to complete in-house diagnostics instead of referring elsewhere

• Fill gaps in neonatal intensive care (NICU) resources

• Provide additional patient beds- although the hospitals had patient beds before, reportedly they were constantly moving between departments because of bed shortage

The medical devices, paired with knowledge of how to operate them, will save lives of women needing emergency C-sections, newborns requiring resuscitation and/or intensive care, patients in need of a laboratory diagnosis like diabetes or HIV/AIDs, and individuals needing minor and major surgery who will no longer have to travel far from home, up to 50 kilometers, throughout the KT Zone. 

Providing medical equipment and subsequent training is just one of the ways WEEMA is strengthening the healthcare system in the KT Zone!

To learn more about this work and receive regular updates, follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and sign up for our newsletters.