Why Women?
Why does Soap4Life focus on Women and Children?
Because we have to.
Our experience shows us that, when equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination. Not everyone starts from the same place on the path out of poverty. Lack of education for girls contributes to early marriage, higher birth rates, and lower income.
Girls face the greatest risk, as they often have no choice but to leave school to help their family earn money, find food, look after younger siblings, collect water, and run the household while their parents work.
Women and girls are an important part of the solutions needed to truly overcome poverty. Women tend to transfer improvements in their own lives to the lives of their children, families and communities. To ensure this happens, we promote savings and provide women with a donation of soapmaking equipment and supplies so they can turn their talents into businesses.
It’s simple: In the world’s poorest communities, girls and women bear the brunt of poverty. Fighting poverty in those communities requires focusing on girls and women to achieve equality. When families struggle to grow enough food to eat, or earn enough money to send all their kids to school, it’s the girls who are often the last to eat and first to be kept home from school. In these same communities, it’s the women who are frequently denied the right to own the land they’ve farmed their entire lives. And where girls and women are denied freedom to leave their homes or walk down a street, they struggle to earn a living, attend school or even visit a doctor.
But girls and women aren’t just the faces of the poverty; they’re also the key to overcoming it.
Women and girls living in rural and remote areas of Laos are often the most disadvantaged. Due often to economic contribution to the village, men are usually described as the heads of the households, representing their families at official meetings. Many women are illiterate and do not speak the national language used for education. Prevailing social and cultural norms mean women are not confident to give their opinions, and do not demonstrate simple meeting skills such as taking turns to speak out. Therefore, often women cannot participate fully in village development activity processes other than domestic activity.
Soap4Life teaches women how to use locally available resources in a sustainable way. S4L supports equally women and men of the villages to produce products from locally sourced coconuts, pig fat, pandan, turmeric and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. They are trained to improve the quality of the products and in marketing in order to increase their income. Once their soap products meet established standards, they are then offered to Fair Trade buyers for export. The training is generational as mothers will teach daughters and daughters will teach their children.
By rolling out our business model in remote villages in Lao where women become business owners, we can collectively help in eliminating gender inequality and empower women in society. We are a proud part of a growing notion that says empowering women through business creates not only revenue generation, but also an entire global investment concept. What we hope our audience, donors and all interested parties understand is that though our organization is a not-for-profit establishment, the objective of the on-going, never-going-to-die project is to create very real, tangible measures of success in the private business sector for the women whom we are teaching to make and market their soap products from locally sourced materials.
Soap4Life teaches women how to use locally available resources in a sustainable way. S4L supports equally women and men of the villages to produce products from locally sourced coconuts, pig fat, pandan, turmeric and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. They are trained to improve the quality of the products and in marketing in order to increase their income. Once their soap products meet established standards, they are then offered to Fair Trade buyers for export. The training is generational as mothers will teach daughters and daughters will teach their children.
By rolling out our business model in remote villages in Lao where women become business owners, we can collectively help in eliminating gender inequality and empower women in society. We are a proud part of a growing notion that says empowering women through business creates not only revenue generation, but also an entire global investment concept. What we hope our audience, donors and all interested parties understand is that though our organization is a not-for-profit establishment, the objective of the on-going, never-going-to-die project is to create very real, tangible measures of success in the private business sector for the women whom we are teaching to make and market their soap products from locally sourced materials.