Three years ago, 47-year-old Anna Okot fled her home in northern Uganda with her six children. Like millions of others, she and her family had been forced from their homes by the fighting between government troops and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a battle that had been raging for nearly 20 years.

The toll has been heaviest on rural farm families like Anna’s who depend on their land to feed themselves and earn enough cash to buy simple necessities. Without their land, they have few alternatives. “When I came from my home, I had nothing,” Anna said. Her story shows the ways that investment in women can pay off not just for one woman but for her entire community.

When Anna arrived in Tetugu, a camp for internally displaced persons, she felt relief at finding a safe haven from the fighting, but was uncertain how she was going to meet even the simplest needs of her family. Her answer came in realizing that she was not alone.

“When families were displaced by the war, we realized women could not rebuild all by ourselves. We needed to work together to earn some money,” she said.

Anna brought together women like herself to form a women’s association called Lacan Kwitte, “A Poor Person Struggles.” As the group’s chairperson, Anna works with other members on projects to improve life for their families, sometimes with the support of CARE and other aid organizations. Working together, they have distributed seeds and tools, and offered training in small-scale business management and leadership skills.

These modest investments yield good returns when combined with women’s drive to succeed in making a new life. As if reading from detailed business records, Anna Okot can rattle off from memory every crop she has planted recently:

 “When CARE gave us bean seed, I was able to sell the harvest for 50,000 shillings [about US$30] and buy household items,” she said. “I also got tomato seeds; that harvest brought me 20,000 shillings and I bought a goat. I sold my cabbage harvest for 15,000 shillings and bought a small radio. I have planted cowpeas as well; with that money I paid school fees for the children.”

There are many women like Anna Okot --women who work in their fields and then go home to cook, care for the children, collect water, clean house, care for animals and often manage a small enterprise. They scarcely scrape by when things go well. When they don’t, they have only their own hard work and sense of responsibility to their families to fall back on.

But a small investment from CARE helped them organize to create a new future for them all. “A poor person struggles,” but in joining with others Anna has overcome even the gravest of setbacks and is showing others that they can too.

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