In the northern part of Nigeria, women are subjected to abject poverty due lack of direct access to social and economic empowerment. According to WHO, a woman empowered is a generation taken from poverty and this is one of our goals, to ensure women are enlightened and empowered in the aspect of renewable energy.
To create a shift in the protracted nature of the inexposure to financial inclusion, RUWES developed a concept to break the barrier of women being partially or wholly dependent on their male counterpart or spouses for their daily living, by empowering rural women and girls in Kaduna State. Most of these women are intelligent and hardworking, however because of the lack of viable enterprises that can channel their inherent human resources into profitable use for themselves, families and the country, they tend to rely on their husbands and manly figures in their family and community. These are some of the underlying factors that cause and promote poverty, resulting in many children being denied from being enrolled in schools by their parents and also pushes many parents to forcing or subjecting their children or wards into unhealthy early marriages.
Rural Women Energy Security in partnership with Kaduna State University, established a well-equipped Skill Acquisition Centre with Clean Energy facilities for women and girls. This will enable women in Kaduna State and in neighbouring states across Nigeria to learn new skills on the use of clean energy/solar bakery, production of clay pot water filtration system, detergent and soap making, training on the use of sewing machines, production alternative sources of energy from agricultural waste, and so on. By synergizing capacity enhancement with our viable business models, we have proved severally that our rural women are intelligent and resourceful if equipped with appropriate skills/tools. Also, there are over 300,000 women farmers involved in Kaduna state, which RUWES has identified and we are poised to ensure that they are patronised and reap gainful returns on their labour and investments by synergizing with all relevant stakeholders that would push this course forward.
It is therefore envisaged that after completion of their training, the women will become clean energy entrepreneurs, who are capable of engaging in sustainable and environmentally friendly business ventures and thereby add value to themselves, their families and their communities at large.
