Alternative Income

Women's Cooperatives

Our experience and outside research have shown that projects focusing on women benefit the whole family. They are successful largely because they allow women to earn a living wage and to increase their savings rate. Women are then free to invest in their families, their living spaces, and in sending their children to school.

Women’s savings are most often reinvested directly back into their families, which benefits the health and education of their children. These projects are also important in helping to sustain Free The Children’s schools, as they allow women to contribute towards teachers’ wages and school supplies for their children.

Women willingly contribute to sustaining the schools, as the Alternative Income Campaign projects empower them to become involved in the education of their children. In addition, women gain more control over and access to money, which increases their self-confidence, dignity, and sense of self-worth.

As part of our Alternative Income Campaign, Free The Children has provided impoverished families with milking animals, sewing machines, gem polishing machines, farming tools and arable land on which to work.

Alternative Income Story: A Coffee Cooperative in Nicaragua

For example, Free The Children has purchased plots of fertile land, as well as farming tools, for female-headed households in Nicaragua. This project helped Nicaraguan women not only to grow their own food, but to develop a coffee growing cooperative as well. The women increased their incomes, improved their social status, and were able to support themselves and their families.

Adopt-a-Village and provide a family with alternative income resources!