Seeds 2: Supporting Women’s Work Around the World

When the population of Port Sudan leaped from 50,00 in 1956 to half a million in the 1980s, a small-scale enterprise program was initiated to aid the poorest residents in saving and expanding the small businesses that supported them and their families. The analyses of this and six other projects, along with the introduction and afterwords for this volume, illuminate various strategies aimed at increasing women’s access to land, labor, and credit markets; providing child care, health care, and other support services; and organizing women for collective action and political participation.

Seeds 2 also includes a study that documents UNICEF’s efforts to institute child-care programs in Ecuador, Ethiopia, and Nepal with an emphasis on health and education. Case studies from India, Mozambique, and Zambia describe women joining together to use the land more beneficially for people and ecology and, in the process, to learn new skills in organizing, literacy, and accounting. In the United States, Women Venture provides the means and support for women to start their own businesses as a route out of welfare and poverty.

Seeds 2 puts into global perspective both problems and successes of projects that promote women’s economic self-sufficiency and political participation.