Women of Yi ethnic group in Boduoluo Village going forward
Original, GPIG, 03-09-2018
In 2000, Green Watershed, the cooperative and supportive partner of the Oxfam Hong Kong was set up in Lashi Town, Lijiang City in Yunnan Province to carry out a comprehensive improvement of small river basins. This program incorporated several elements like sustainable development, fishery resource management, environment conservation, rural infrastructure construction, gender equality and villagers’ developing capabilities to help rural impoverished households to solve their own livelihood problem. Of them, Boduoluo Village, Haishuiyuan District, Lashi Town-an international wetland in northwest Yunnan, was once the most impoverished village inhabited by Yi ethnic group. After decades of efforts, Boduoluo Village realized development in both environmental conservation and diversified livelihood required exploring new avenues and the women in the Yi ethnic group became the backbone for the development of the village.
Boduoluo Village used to live on felling the virgin forest
Boduoluo Villagers who once earned a living by logging in virgin forests, lost its main source of livelihood when the Chinese government adopted the policy of “banning deforestation” in 1998. Worse still, deforestation resulted in years of snow disasters where lots of livestock died of cold, water loss and soil erosion as well as soil degradation, making the sustainable development of agriculture and animal husbandry impossible. Potatoes were the only food for villagers here. Boduoluo was suffering the double impact caused by ecological deterioration and a lack of livelihood options when Oxfam Hong Kong came here.
The idea that men are superior to women was deeply rooted in traditional Yi culture. When Oxfam Hong Kong intervened, nearly 80 percent of the women here couldn’t read any Chinese characters and couldn’t communicate with others in Mandarin. They even failed to tell different departments and write their children’s names when they brought children to hospitals in cities. The women here lived in an isolated circle, and had no say in domestic and public affairs.
The women of Boduoluo Village are receiving a literacy lesson
Oxfam Hong Kong, which has always attached great importance to the development of impoverished women in a weak status, began to strive for equal access to resources and development opportunities for the local women by incorporating women’s empowerment techniques and gender equality in its program. In 2002, Oxfam Hong Kong started to support the development of Yi women by providing micro loan.
Its cooperative partner “Green Watershed” invited Philippine experts on microcredit to train the villagers, helping them understand what is a loan, how to manage funds and how important it is to build credit worthiness.
Women from five households formed a team where members helped and supervised each other. Yang Chunhua was among those women. She bought ewes and sows with the loan and accumulated money by raising and selling the pigs and lambs produced by them. A year later, with the significant changes taking place in her family, Yang Chunhua became more and more confident. Through microcredit, women got a basic learning of bookkeeping methods, learned to use money in a planned way and cultivated the good habit of depositing money and repaying loans. Men in the village joked that, “It’s in 2002 that Boduoluo women became masters.”
The program also supported women here to set up women’s groups so that they could gather together to discuss what they wanted to do: learning accounting, learning Mandarin, learning to plant medicinal plants, wild pepper trees, cherry-apple trees and cooking, etc. All in all, they wanted to learn everything. Their desire to create a happy future with their own hands was as strong as the longing in their eyes.
In the winter of 2003, the women’s group developed into an evening school. Classrooms in the village primary school were rented, and teachers here were also invited to give lessons to them. Day after day, under the light of stars outside and pine torches inside, women gradually mastered more than 100 common Chinese characters, and the methods to calculate their own families’ income; knew how to communicate with others in simple Mandarin, plant potatoes, medical herbs as well as how to control pests.
The evening school helped women in Yi ethnic group master the techniques to communicate with the outside world, and even made it possible for them to work outside in seasons when work in the village was scarce, and thus largely expanded their living circles and raised their status in domestic and village affairs.
At the same time, women had a share in the Project Management Team and Disaster Control Team set up under the support of Oxfam Hong Kong. As their capability grew, women could speak up and assess the community resources and voice their development demand in the villager’s development planning conference. Their demands won the common respect of villagers. In the villager’s view, the most significant change in Boduoluo was that: in the past, meetings on village’s affairs were exclusive to men, but now women could also attend. They shared equal speaking rights with men and people followed whoever put forward the best idea.
Besides, the program attached great importance to giving women opportunities to perform their functions in developing eco-tourism and popularizing Yi’s culture. To protect and propagate Yi’s traditional culture and enrich women’s cultural life, women’s groups organized traditional Yi activities such as dancing around the fire and embroidering. Moreover, a Boduoluo (dancing around the fire) Team was also formed. In 2009, the Boduoluo Dancing Team won the first place in the Dancing Competition in Lashihai Town, and won the third prize in Yulong County, which exalted the whole village. The women there said with great pride, “The first and second prizes in Yulong’s competition were won by professional tourist dancing teams, and only our team was truly composed by farmers.”
In 2012, Boduoluo, after a ten-year attempt at environmental conservation, regained its original beauty. Villagers made an attempt to develop eco-tourism in an effort to increase income.
Watershed management groups were transformed into ecological tourism cooperative societies and Sha Fuhua and Lu Xiuying, two female representatives worked there in charge of dancing, cooking and cleaning-up affairs in the tourist reception. Villager Liu Zhengwu, who was another backbone in this community, was in charge of tourists’ accommodation, but often it was his wife Yang Chunhua who undertook his work as she thought she was better at communicating and coordinating. In 2012, Yang Chunhua was elected by the whole village to take on the work of financial management.
Boduoluo is a prime example of a successful poverty reduction program carried out by international organizations in destitute areas in China. With supports from Oxfam Hong Kong and Green Watershed, the women of Yi ethnic group, who used to lack confidence became key stakeholders in the economic development, social communication, and community participation processes. They displayed a kind of creativity and energy beyond imagination.
Original, GPIG, 03-09-2018
In 2000, Green Watershed, the cooperative and supportive partner of the Oxfam Hong Kong was set up in Lashi Town, Lijiang City in Yunnan Province to carry out a comprehensive improvement of small river basins. This program incorporated several elements like sustainable development, fishery resource management, environment conservation, rural infrastructure construction, gender equality and villagers’ developing capabilities to help rural impoverished households to solve their own livelihood problem. Of them, Boduoluo Village, Haishuiyuan District, Lashi Town-an international wetland in northwest Yunnan, was once the most impoverished village inhabited by Yi ethnic group. After decades of efforts, Boduoluo Village realized development in both environmental conservation and diversified livelihood required exploring new avenues and the women in the Yi ethnic group became the backbone for the development of the village.
Boduoluo Village used to live on felling the virgin forest
Boduoluo Villagers who once earned a living by logging in virgin forests, lost its main source of livelihood when the Chinese government adopted the policy of “banning deforestation” in 1998. Worse still, deforestation resulted in years of snow disasters where lots of livestock died of cold, water loss and soil erosion as well as soil degradation, making the sustainable development of agriculture and animal husbandry impossible. Potatoes were the only food for villagers here. Boduoluo was suffering the double impact caused by ecological deterioration and a lack of livelihood options when Oxfam Hong Kong came here.
The idea that men are superior to women was deeply rooted in traditional Yi culture. When Oxfam Hong Kong intervened, nearly 80 percent of the women here couldn’t read any Chinese characters and couldn’t communicate with others in Mandarin. They even failed to tell different departments and write their children’s names when they brought children to hospitals in cities. The women here lived in an isolated circle, and had no say in domestic and public affairs.
The women of Boduoluo Village are receiving a literacy lesson
Oxfam Hong Kong, which has always attached great importance to the development of impoverished women in a weak status, began to strive for equal access to resources and development opportunities for the local women by incorporating women’s empowerment techniques and gender equality in its program. In 2002, Oxfam Hong Kong started to support the development of Yi women by providing micro loan.
Its cooperative partner “Green Watershed” invited Philippine experts on microcredit to train the villagers, helping them understand what is a loan, how to manage funds and how important it is to build credit worthiness.
Women from five households formed a team where members helped and supervised each other. Yang Chunhua was among those women. She bought ewes and sows with the loan and accumulated money by raising and selling the pigs and lambs produced by them. A year later, with the significant changes taking place in her family, Yang Chunhua became more and more confident. Through microcredit, women got a basic learning of bookkeeping methods, learned to use money in a planned way and cultivated the good habit of depositing money and repaying loans. Men in the village joked that, “It’s in 2002 that Boduoluo women became masters.”
The program also supported women here to set up women’s groups so that they could gather together to discuss what they wanted to do: learning accounting, learning Mandarin, learning to plant medicinal plants, wild pepper trees, cherry-apple trees and cooking, etc. All in all, they wanted to learn everything. Their desire to create a happy future with their own hands was as strong as the longing in their eyes.
In the winter of 2003, the women’s group developed into an evening school. Classrooms in the village primary school were rented, and teachers here were also invited to give lessons to them. Day after day, under the light of stars outside and pine torches inside, women gradually mastered more than 100 common Chinese characters, and the methods to calculate their own families’ income; knew how to communicate with others in simple Mandarin, plant potatoes, medical herbs as well as how to control pests.
The evening school helped women in Yi ethnic group master the techniques to communicate with the outside world, and even made it possible for them to work outside in seasons when work in the village was scarce, and thus largely expanded their living circles and raised their status in domestic and village affairs.
At the same time, women had a share in the Project Management Team and Disaster Control Team set up under the support of Oxfam Hong Kong. As their capability grew, women could speak up and assess the community resources and voice their development demand in the villager’s development planning conference. Their demands won the common respect of villagers. In the villager’s view, the most significant change in Boduoluo was that: in the past, meetings on village’s affairs were exclusive to men, but now women could also attend. They shared equal speaking rights with men and people followed whoever put forward the best idea.
Besides, the program attached great importance to giving women opportunities to perform their functions in developing eco-tourism and popularizing Yi’s culture. To protect and propagate Yi’s traditional culture and enrich women’s cultural life, women’s groups organized traditional Yi activities such as dancing around the fire and embroidering. Moreover, a Boduoluo (dancing around the fire) Team was also formed. In 2009, the Boduoluo Dancing Team won the first place in the Dancing Competition in Lashihai Town, and won the third prize in Yulong County, which exalted the whole village. The women there said with great pride, “The first and second prizes in Yulong’s competition were won by professional tourist dancing teams, and only our team was truly composed by farmers.”
In 2012, Boduoluo, after a ten-year attempt at environmental conservation, regained its original beauty. Villagers made an attempt to develop eco-tourism in an effort to increase income.
Watershed management groups were transformed into ecological tourism cooperative societies and Sha Fuhua and Lu Xiuying, two female representatives worked there in charge of dancing, cooking and cleaning-up affairs in the tourist reception. Villager Liu Zhengwu, who was another backbone in this community, was in charge of tourists’ accommodation, but often it was his wife Yang Chunhua who undertook his work as she thought she was better at communicating and coordinating. In 2012, Yang Chunhua was elected by the whole village to take on the work of financial management.
Boduoluo is a prime example of a successful poverty reduction program carried out by international organizations in destitute areas in China. With supports from Oxfam Hong Kong and Green Watershed, the women of Yi ethnic group, who used to lack confidence became key stakeholders in the economic development, social communication, and community participation processes. They displayed a kind of creativity and energy beyond imagination.
