Siyahluma Girls

Young Women Forming an Alliance for Economic Emancipation -Siyahluma Girls
One of the biggest challenges that affects communities in Eswatini is unemployment. Siyahluma Girls is a young women empowerment initiative that was founded by 15 adolescent girls and young women at Ludzeludze constituency under Mbekelweni Chiefdom. The main objective for the community of practice (CP) was to build a savings and credit scheme. This was done to accrue enough resources that could be sharable at the end of each year providing reasonable dividends for members to enhance their livelihood.

Introduction to the LISTEN Project
The first point of contact between Siyahluma Girls and the MOH LISTEN Project was back in December 2021. The LISTEN Project team introduced the project to the group of young ladies on how they could approach problem solving through the use of the human centered design approach. The CP was given an assignment of which they were supposed to identify the top 3 challenges that were affecting their livelihood in the community. In April 2022, the LISTEN team was able to meet with Siyahluma girls in an effort to discuss the previously identified challenges. Through the process of identifying challenges, the ladies were assisted to come up with possible solutions for them which led to the production of the Standard Operating procedure document. The young girls aim to scale up their livelihood through utilizing their savings to start a business that can increase their revenue. The LISTEN project was able to link the ladies with an enterprise facilitator who was able to mentor the ladies into identifying viable businesses that can benefit the community of Mbekelweni.

Impact of the program
The Siyahluma community of practice is currently able to save $2.89 per person which they are planning to grow and utilize to build a sustainable business of providing animal feed in the community. The Mbekelweni community chiefdom fully support these young ladies as they were able to offer vacant land that the ladies can utilize to build a permanent structure for their business. The ladies have through the project learnt the importance of physical health as well, as during their biweekly meetings, they discuss issues of health. While access to health services is still a challenge in the community as health facilities are outstretched from their location, the ladies have identified the need to create vertical linkages with institutions like the Nazarene Compassionate Ministry who from time to time provide access to health services at community level. In order to grow their business ambitions, the ladies have identified the Youth Fund as a structure that can assist with access to financing to enhance their business.

Enhancing Healthy Living Through Access to Clean Water-Siyalwini Water Scheme
Siyalwini community under the Mafutseni community has for the longest time struggled with access to clean water. This posed a challenge that community members decided to collaborate and solve together. This led to the birth of Siyalwini Water Scheme which consist of a membership of 62 people ,36 females and 26 males. Through their resilience, Siyalwini was able to gain access to clean water through the assistance of the LISTEN Project. Once Siyalwini water scheme solved the access to clean water challenge, they progressed into looking into the maintenance of the borehole that was provided to them, through monthly contributions from members. The CP was formed in February 2019.

Introduction of the LISTEN Approach
Siyalwini community members identified that they had a sanitation problem in their community. The shortage of clean water was also caused by issues of contamination in their sources of water. On July 27th 2022, Siyalwini water scheme in collaboration with Vulamehlo Nazarene clinic and the local environmental health officer held a meeting to discuss a way forward that would see the Siyalwini community engaged on issues of sanitation. As resolved by the meeting, a task team was formed and tasked with the responsibility to engage the community leadership on scheduling a meeting that would resume the dialogue on the importance of sanitation around the community. The meeting was held on the 1st of October 2022. Pursuant to that, a total of 51 community members underwent a sanitation training facilitated by the ministry of health. The training focused on disseminating information on what constitutes as a proper pit latrine structure. The ministry further informed participants that in order for a community to have proper sanitation, at least 95% of the homesteads had to have proper pit latrine structures. A task team was then identified which was to conduct an assessment of the toilets in the area. The task team then facilitated a result-disseminating meeting with the community hosted on February 8th, 2023. The report revealed that 377 homestead were assessed, out of the 377-homestead assessed, a total of 55 homestead had no pit latrine structures while an additional 67 homesteads had inappropriate toilets. These numbers contributed to the total of 71 cases of children under 5 years with acute diarrhea.
The Siyalwini community continues to drive sanitation in the communities. The community currently prioritizes eliminating open defecation, increase latrine use and promote safe waste disposal to break the fecal-oral transmission pathway and hygiene. The community has undergone a training focusing on the importance of proper hygiene, sanitation and orientation on the MOH standards pit latrine. In March 2023 through the Environmental health unit 100 homesteads received proper toilet structures.