Contributor: Jean-Pierre Dushime

Prudence Mbouïma and her two-year-old son Dieu-Puissant. Photo: Jean-Pierre Dushime/Mercy Corps

Central African Republic (CAR) is one of the poorest countries in the world. Two-thirds of the population lives on less than $1 per day. For women, life in CAR is exceptionally hard. In addition to crushing poverty, women face limitless violence and other abuses of their human rights.

Eighteen-year-old Prudence Mbouïma is one of them. The mother of a two-year-old boy named Dieu-Puissant, Prudence can’t continue to go to school while taking care of her son by herself. Her husband abandoned her in Bambari when she was three months pregnant and went to leave in Bangui, CAR's capital and biggest city which is almost 200 miles away.

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Standing in one of the stone quarries she owns, Micheline explains how Mercy Corps has helped with her business. Photo: Jean-Pierre Dushime/Mercy Corps

The Women’s Capacity Building project is a program developed by Mercy Corps in Central African Republic. After a nine-month training on how to manage a small income-generating activity, 74 women’s associations were funded by Mercy Corps in different domains, according to their activities. Women (and some men) had certain resources, but the challenge was how to make them profitable. That is what brought Mercy Corps to set up a program to support women, train them and give them a way to contribute for the well-being of their families— as well as the development of their communities.

Micheline Mbotto, a 30-year-old mother of three children, is one of those who've benefited from Mercy Corps' training and funding.

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Concy Ato (foreground, carrying plant seedlings) has learned to better provide for her six children through Mercy Corps' Healthy Practices Strong Communities program. Photo: Riak Paul Awuol/Mercy Corps

When rebels attacked her village, 34-year-old Concy Ato suddenly found herself as a single mother taking care of four sons and two daughters. Her husband was killed by troops of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that ravaged northern Uganda over almost a generation of civil war.

Today, her late husband’s small farm helps sustain her six children, thanks to the laws of inheritance within her particular clan. Concy kept on planting sorghum, maize and millet for a while, until she decided to change the crops and to plant cassava because of straggle weed, a poisonous plant that destroys all cereal crops. The work has always been challenging, but this land was her only source of income before the arrival of Mercy Corps, before the start of the Healthy Practices Strong Communities program here.

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I was born on February 1, 1980 in Rwanda. I did my primary school and a part of secondary school in my home country, then I fled to neighboring Congo during the genocide that happened in Rwanda in 1994.

I continued my secondary school studies in Congo for a year, then I fled again in 1995 during the war that struck that country. I went to Tanzania, then to Zambia and then stayed in Malawi for two and a half years. Then I went to South Africa before finally making it to Central African Republic where I joined my family.

Since 2000, I’ve lived in Central African Republic as a refugee. I finished school and did my university studies here, and then I found Mercy Corps.

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