SENEGAL-SOCIAL-GENRE
Kaolack, March 6 (APS) – Women members of Village Savings and Credit Associations (AVEC), in partnership with the Community Support Program for Child Protection (PACOPE) of Kaolack (center), delivered, on Friday, donations consisting of sanitary napkins, clothing and food products to inmates of the remand center and children of the Lamine Coulibaly nursery.
“Every year, as International Women’s Rights Day approaches, on March 8, we support women who are in the Village Savings and Credit Associations (AVEC). The latter thought of providing their support to the women detained at the Kaolack MAC and to the residents of the Bongré nursery,” explained Saly Bodian, the coordinator of the Community Support Program for Child Protection (PACOPE), financed by SOS Luxembourg.
A member of the SOS Kaolack children’s village, PACOPE operates in four districts of the capital of Saloum, notably Darou Salam Diamaguène, Diamaguène extension, Samba Moussa and Abattoirs Ndangane.
According to Ms. Bodian, these women members of village savings and credit associations themselves financed the purchase of these donations which they wanted to share with these vulnerable sections of society.
“We accompanied them as well as all the units of the SOS Children’s Village, notably the medical center and the school. The objective is to especially show the women who are in detention at the Kaolack MAC that their sisters who are outside are thinking of them and that they are part of the celebration of the international day dedicated to all women in the world,” she maintained.
Spokesperson for the VSLA women, Fatou Touré from the Samba Moussa district, explained that her comrades wanted to show their solidarity with these detainees and the children of the Lamine Coulibaly nursery.
“We think that these women and children must be supported. And we also provide support to vulnerable families who are in our neighborhoods, by paying for the children’s education. We also finance the training of some of them, because it is a way of fighting against the wandering of young people,” she said.
According to Fatou Touré, PACOPE came to “fight poverty and promote the empowerment of women” through concrete actions.
“We considered it more useful to show solidarity with poor people than to organize activities to celebrate International Women’s Rights Day,” she argued.
ADE/OID/ASB
