EMPOWERING WOMEN IN TANZANIA
In many parts of Africa, women lack power, which means they lack money, which means they lack healthcare. Since AIDS, this equation has only become more pronounced.
Two Canadian women hope to turn this equation around, in one part of Tanzania at least. Queen’s University physician Karen Yeates and Kingston businesswoman Carol Bisaillon founded Prevention Through Empowerment in the hopes of improving basic health and HIV prevention among Tanzanian women.
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“The center provides open, honest sexual health education.”
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Together we can
Prevention Through Empowerment, a CACHA project, started up and now helps run Pamoja Tunaweza Women’s Center in the Mount Kilimanjaro area of Tanzania. The name means “together we can” in the local Kishwahili language.
Staffed by Tanzanian women with training in human rights and HIV/AIDS-related issues, the center aims to improve knowledge of and access to women’s health care.
“Discussing sexual health is taboo in Tanzania,” says Karen Yeates. “The center provides open, honest sexual health education. Through this, we hope to make these discussions more mainstream.”
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“Being able to negotiate a sexual encounter gives women a higher probability of protecting themselves against HIV.”
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Better partners
But it is not just women who benefit from the programs and forums at the center. Men and boys are also invited to participate in sessions where they will learn how to be better partners to their wives and girlfriends in the fight against HIV.
“We want to help women feel they have more power in sexual decision making,” says Yeates. “Being able to negotiate a sexual encounter will give them a higher probability of protecting themselves against HIV infection.”
The center also offers temporary shelter for women and children in need, and free and confidential HIV counselling and testing.
Universal health
To complement this already broad mandate, the center opened a women’s health clinic during the CACHA-PTE Women’s Health Caravan in April 2008. A female Tanzanian physician teamed with a Canadian family physician with experience in women’s health provide a respectful, compassionate and confidential environment for women with HIV and other health concerns.
“Most women in Canada dislike a visit to their doctor to discuss women’s health or sexual health issues,” says Yeates. “Now imagine being a poor, illiterate woman in sub-Saharan Africa with HIV and trying to access health services for similar issues.
“Canada and Africa are two very different worlds, but women’s health issues are universal.”
Mama Minde
The idea for the center saw the light at the World AIDS Conference in Toronto 2006. There Yeates and Carol Bisaillon met Elizabeth Minde, known in the Kilimanjaro area as Mama Minde.
Minde is a Tanzanian lawyer who has worked tirelessly for almost two decades as the head of a Tanzanian NGO to improve women’s rights in Tanzanian society through legal aid and education.
“She told us how legal challenges were increasingly difficult to separate from social challenges,” says Yeates. “All of her most disadvantaged clients were women. Her stories about the challenges women face in Tanzania solidified our partnership, not to mention our friendship.”
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“These women will teach their daughters a new way to live, with new expectations for the way they will be treated.”
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Gender equality, health equality
The center supports the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals of improving gender equality and women’s health. Its philosophy is that women will be the ones to change HIV rates, but only once they understand that they have choices.
“Women who understand the health issues and see their role in prevention will teach their daughters a new way to live,” says Yeates, “with new expectations for the way they will be treated.”
Stephen Lewis once said that the women of Africa will bring the continent out of poverty. To that, we say “Pamoja Tunaweza.”
Women on the mountain
Keeping the center running costs about $2,000 a month. Fundraising plans include a New Year’s Eve 2008 Gala in Kingston and a January 2009 Mount Kilimanjaro climb.
Five Tanzanian women and a team of twenty Canadians (including Dr. Yeates and Ms. Bisaillon) will undertake the approximately five-day trip to ascend the highest point in Africa.
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