Seeds are small and powerful things, and it takes a lot of faith and vision to be able see the potential forests that they can grow into. This Mother's Day, we want to celebrate those who have tended the seeds in our minds and in our gardens. Rockflower has been an incredible mother to our programs, a catalyser that has had the dedication and drive to support us, as well as projects all over the world. A mother that has taken us under her wing and taught us valuable lessons that highlight the strength of a holistic approach. Inspired by this, Casa Congo adapted our methods, put more power in the hands of women, mothers and children to guide our vision and impact. As the years go by we also have the pleasure of slowly getting to know many of the other organisations that share a visionary stance on empowering women and girls all over the world and transforming the future. We are so proud to be a part of this family!
Being part of the Rockflower family means believing in the power of flipping the script; having faith in fostering long-term caring relationships which combine “radical idealism and practical realism” in approaches that put the reward into the hands of those who experience risk in ways we could never imagine.
It means, looking at an abandoned degraded site, seeing a forest, and most importantly holding on to your motherly instinct to love, nurture, respect, and tend the soil to make that transformation happen. When Casa Congo began, almost 5 years ago, we understood the power of nature, the strength of forests, and the fortitude of sea turtles. Yet one thing we struggled to grasp from the beginning was the importance of nurturing an understanding of mother earth. Rockflower was a patient mother like most, and helped tend our philosophical garden, our “currency of mind”.
Why is this something that should be celebrated in the context of the ‘development’ industry which we sometimes regretfully find ourselves in? Many funding organisations are full of patriarchal contradictions. They seek to fund small-scale local initiatives yet they impose a rigorous application process, full of financial restrictions, demands, and obligations, which most small-scale initiatives never have the resources to comply with. Those working on the ground pour hours into navigating these tedious processes, valuable hours when they could be creating impact with their programs, precious hours which if they charged for them would probably amount to more than the entire grant amount they would receive! Projects become goal focused, goals defined by the archaic kafkaesque grant structures that lose sight of the entire process. Their gardens are neglected as they simply focus on the inputs and the outputs.
Rockflower’s tolerance, compassion and empathy enabled us to focus on the processes that would transform how we run our programs, allowing us to focus on the substance; how we tend our garden. Rockflower’s philosophy began to run through our work, we began to understand the power of mother earth, and the power of her mothering nature. Our own radical idealism became a reality, because it was supported and encouraged, and we stand taller as a consequence. It’s so simple and it’s the most powerful seed of them all! Does this mean that all of our efforts focus on empowering women and girls? Of course not. Yet, that thread has been woven deep within the fabric of our organisation, luckily we have Las Tejedoras, Las Flores, and all of our mothers and students to do that weaving with us.
As both the Director of Agroecology for Casa Congo and a member of the Rockflower Partner Advisory Council, I have a unique opportunity to be both on the receiving side of Rockflower’s targeted approach and to be a co-creator and collaborator with all of these other partners in the Rockflower family. The Council consists of twelve members representing a broad range of Rockflower partners, both in geography and work. We each share our work with monthly calls to The Catalyzer Collective and meet once a year virtually to share ideas and best practices.
I want to highlight five of the other partners on the Advisory Council, (Five being the Rockflower number!) by giving you a glimpse into their work and their unique talents and perspectives, as well as underline the importance of understanding the universal appreciation of what it takes to nurture and mother all of us to ensure productive and thriving communities.
Constance Mugari - Women Advocacy Project - Zimbabwe
Constance, a mother and fearless advocate for the right of girls to be educated and live free from poverty and injustice, works in four communities around Harare, Zimbabwe preventing girls from early marriage through the establishment of Women Advocacy Project and the social enterprise - Clean Girls Soap. The partnership with Rockflower began in 2016 with the ‘Give Us Books not Husbands campaign,’ and has since expanded to include yearly support to establish the Clean Girls Soap brand. By ensuring that girls have an opportunity to earn income through the sale of clean girls soap, WAP is ensuring a sustainable business model that they plan to expand in other communities around Harare, not to mention its power to ensure a cleaner and healthier environment, and more resilient local economy.
Roseline Kamden - African Youth Alliance, Cameroon
Roseline, a mother of five children, runs the African Youth Alliance in Cameroon, and understands only too well the importance of the Five Key framework of Rockflower’s strategy to improve the lives and wellbeing of the women in rural communities of Cameroon. AYA began with the ‘Empowering Women and Girls through Mentorship and Training’ project and her team have recently been working on a two year Five Key, Five Villages project. She shares my love for the joy that gardens can bring to a community and has shared stories of the propagator they built recently with the support of Rockflower. “ We taught our mothers how to use local materials and technology to build a covered heated container filled with earth or compost, used for germinating, or raising seedlings. It improves their gardening. They have better seedlings for their gardens and raise income from the sale of garden seedlings. We are also preparing them for tree planting activities, they will be trained how to multiply trees and produce tree seedlings in the propagator.”
Somto Ugwu - Society for the Improvement of Rural People, Nigeria
Somto is a lawyer and a dedicated gender advocate. His work for the Society for the Improvement of Rural People (SIRP), focuses on dealing with the challenges of FGM, Child marriage and menstrual poverty. The ‘End Female Genital Mutilation and Keep Girls In School’ project with Rockflower has led to an increased awareness of the extraordinary work of this critical civil society organization in Northern Nigeria. He wanted to celebrate the work of women like Mrs Faith Obioma, reputed to be one of Nigeria’s foremost promoters of Girl Child Education, who engages the media to advocate for girl child education in Nigeria. On a personal level, she is a heroine of his, and one of the many reasons why he continues to do this work.
Siddique Hussain - Community Services Program, Pakistan
Siddique has decades of experience in understanding the importance of community development and spends every waking minute, ensuring that he is doing everything in his power to ensure that all of the mothers he works with every single day are respected for the tenacity and resiliency that they employ to keep going through the most devastating of times. One of Rockflower’s very first partners, the Community Services Program (CSP), works with Rockflower on Maternal Health, Education and Economic Empowerment.
Pakistan has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and is fearful of another surge as it watches the devastation in nearby India. On a recent partner call, Siddique mentioned that receiving cash from Rockflower at the beginning of the pandemic for immediate Covid Relief last year was “like much needed oxygen to keep us going”. The COVID-19 Relief in Pakistan and AJK prompted recognition of their extraordinary work, with a best performance certificate in the health sector, AJ &K, from the Honorable Mr. Shehryar Khan Afridi - chairman of the Parliamentary special Committee on Kashmir and member of the National Assembly of Pakistan.
Haja Tallaway - Foundation for Women and Children Empowerment, Liberia
Haja has developed The Foundation for Women and Children Empowerment (FOWACE) into a force of determination and positivity for so many women who lost their husbands after the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The partnership with Rockflower first began with the ‘Food Security for Ebola Widows’ and has since grown to two more projects, including ‘The Sustainable Livelihood Empowerment Program’ and most recently the ‘Village Savings and Loan, Soap Making and Access to Justice Program’. Haja works to ensure that every single woman knows her rights and is supported in believing that she can support herself and her family without fear of violence or intimidation.
And it takes a whole village to raise a child, that is the Rockflower family. The incredible organisations all over the world which Rockflower supports, are part of something bigger and like us are in a constant dialogue with Tine at Rockflower which is always so refreshingly open, honest and trusting. Everyday, even though each organisation may not be in close contact, we work together, tending our gardens and growing new futures for the generations to come, and today we want to celebrate that. Happy Mother's Day!