Report on Monitoring the Status of Women’s

Empowerment in Small Scale Fish Marketing

1st and 2nd Round Field Monitoring Report

Visitors: - Yared Mesfin and Abebe Cheffo

Sep 24, 2010 E.C

Dec-23, 2010 G.C

 Purpose and Status of Field Monitoring Activity

A field monitoring on the status of women’s fish trading activity was undertaken
by the socio- economic researchers’ group on sep 24 and dec 23 2010 E.C. The
purpose of the visit was to monitor and evaluate the performance of the small
scale fish trading activity project initiated by the researchers’ group 2 years ago.
In addition to the monitoring activity in seeking for areas of technical support,
the visit also has a learning objective in finding scientific ways of ensuring
women’s empowerment and documenting lessons for better achievement in
future endeavors in similar contexts of other areas.

We have made the first visit to the women’s fish trading mini shop where fish is
sold in the form of cooked food. After our arrival, we had a discussion with 2 of
the representatives: Hibist and bbbb from the womens’ fish trading association:
Hulum Yalfal. They informed us that the number of active participants of the
association has dropped down from 24 to 7. They tried to mention the reason for
reduction in active participation of members as a disagreement that occurred
long ago due to mis management of financial resources and abuse made by one
of their active members and another individual whom they reported to be a non
member. But they had no answer as to how they were silent in the face of this
piracy.

Major Challenges and Weaknesses the Group Faced in Relation to Their

Activity

 Lack of group integrity

 Shortage of transportation facilities and bargaining power to pay for and use
transportation services efficiently
 Unable to read and write thereby having poor documentation habits for their
daily sales activities
 Unable to know whom they could get help from and approach to express their
feelings
 Poor or almost no communication with the organizing body: the office of youth
and women’s association of Sebeta Woreda
 Lack of wise marketing skills and promotion efforts
 Not having the contact address of the Gilgel gibe fish fetching site: linkage was
meanwhile disconnected after the eviction of two people who were reported to
have caused the problem in the association
 Having discussed all possible issues regarding the association’s performance
level of the time we have made the following recommendations

 Having issued some legal receipt or invoice of their income and expenses
 Making some amendments on the form and way of selling the fish fetched:
cooked fish rather than raw fish; selling fish in different quantities such as 1/4 th
kg, 1/2kg, etc rather that only in 1kg which gives an option for several buyers for
better purchase and increases the probability of sales and thereby increased
volume of sales. In addition, it was recommended that selling in various
amounts; usually in small quantities below 1kg is more beneficial for the sellers
in terms of price per kg and consistency of quantity of fish sold.
 Promotion activities should be enhanced
 Proper documentation of all the necessary activities conducted on daily basis:
specially those related to daily income and expenses
 Having a regular meeting amongst the members themselves and with the
organizing body: women and youth affairs of the Woreda (Sebeta Hawas) .It
were proposed here that the meeting has to take place on regular bases and on a
fixed schedule.
 Having a report of the activities and financial issues to the organizing body and
other relevant actors if found important. Linkage with the organizing body
should be made and strengthened.
 Having the previous activities and financial transactions audited as per the legal
requirement and setting the system back to a formal bases
 Legalizing all the activities of the association and establishing a formal reporting
and auditing system

After forwarding all the valuable suggestions for the improvement of their
business, we went back to the women and youth office of Sebeta Hawas. We met
Mr. Yusuf, representative of the office and he told us that the problem had a root
cause starting from the establishment and initiation of the business and was
bankrupt by external influence. He also added that there was no organized
system of reporting what they have done. He gave us a detailed view on why the
association has come up to this state form its initial inception. After discussing all
the issues regarding on ways of solving the problems amongst the women
themselves, we held an appointment to conduct a meeting or general assembly
with the association members for Tuesday 17/04/2010
 The points for discussion on the next meeting were basically of two forms:

1. How are the prevailing problems in the association being treated so far? How is
care being taken to prevent such things from happening again?

To amend the persisting problems, the following solutions were temporarily

proposed:

The legal issues of auditing the previous embezzlements should be made. The
same should also be followed so as to reorganize the group for a new vision.

Expenses and income receipt should be issued; proper recording of the same
should be made accordingly. Proper documentation of all the necessary activities
should be made.

Those who are willingly evicted or resigned from the association should
comeback and rejoin

A regular meeting should be held amongst themselves and the organizing body
(Women and Youth Association of the Woreda)

By laws of the association should be agreed upon, issued and implemented

accordingly

Auditing of the previous physical activities and financial performance should be

made and willingly enforced by the organizing body

There should be a regular system and means of reporting all the necessary
activities and financial performances of the association.

In general, the basic problems of the association are: Managing the business
wisely and fixing themselves with the legal system. Legalization of the systems
to be followed by the association is expected to be handled by the organizer with
support from the research center.
1st meeting of the Association with the Woreda Women and Youth Association
and the Involvement of NFALRC

The first meeting with the participation of 15 out of 24 members of the women’s
association was held on Tuesday 17/04/2010 in the Office of the women and
youth association of the woreda at 8pm local time. The aim of the meeting was to
brainstorm members of the association on problems of non participation and lack
of interest that occurred in due course of time so that the association’s members
would be able to solve their problems by themselves. The meeting started with
the introduction given by representative of the meeting organizer office, Mr.
Yusuf with the same view of helping the women explicitly argues on their
problems and solve their problems on their own. The main points that was
raised regarding the issue were

 The association should not continue like this and need to be reformed either
with the existing number of members (7) or with increasing number of
women where the previous dropouts would come and rejoin
 It the duty of the women’s association to resolve their problems and any non
improvement in the current case could result in snatching of the refrigerator
and giving it for another more efficient and likely better performing
association.
 The importance of issuing regulations and by laws by the association
members themselves and the great role of the office (youth and women’s
association) in fulfilling this need

He first started going to the main points of the discussion by reminding the
participants how and with what number the association started its work.
Accordingly there were only 23/24 members who first found the association
“Hulum Yalfal”. Having mentioned that the association should not continue like
this and should make some turning point, he recommended for having an audit
to be made with the associations own money which the members forwarded to
one of the two beneficiaries which they have claimed to benefit more and corrupt
the associations’ resources.

But the main challenge of charging the association to have an audit using their
own money is having no legal documentation or evidence of any form for the
corruption that had occurred as they claimed. But this was given as an
assignment for the association members themselves.
The first question raised was to allow participants of the meeting explain their
feelings and how the current situation has come about. In doing so, each
member explained their own feelings which mostly reside on the case associated
with two individuals: one member and one non member who disrupted the
whole system and raised the conflict which finally led to lack of interest to
participate among most of them and frequent dropouts.

What was the prime importance of focusing on and continuously

supporting the women’s association in fish trading? …As mentioned by
the meeting facilitator

 There are no other associations involved in fish trading either in the form
of raw or cooked fish
 NFALRC has invested a lot of time, capacity building and other physical
resources including refrigerator to support the women’s association
 Except few who had been participating in small scale or petty trading
activities in the local area, most of them had no other alternatives

A Trend of Income and Expenses Incurred by the Women’s Fish Trading

Association (Hulum Yalfal)
S/No Selling Amount of Price of Income Cost of Ideal Profit
Round Fish (KG) fish/kg generated Purchasing the (Expected) in
Brought (Birr) from the fish fish in birr Birr
and sold sold (Birr) (cost of
1 1st 73 90 6,570 2,320
FP+Transport) 4,250

2 2nd 85 90 7,650 2,550 5,100

3 3rd 91.6 80 7,328 2,748 4,580

4 4th 200 80 16,000 6,000 10,000

5 5th 153 107.48 16,500 9,945 6,555 (2,000 TC)

6 6th 50 100 5,000 3,500 2,500(2,000 TC)

7 7th 100 100 10,000 6,500 3,500(2,000 TC)

8 8th 140 100 14,000 9,100 4,900(2,000 TC)

9 9th 81 100 8,100 6,075 2,025(2,000 TC)

Source: Record book of the association and its duplicate file in the woreda’s office of women
and youth.
TC is the transportation cost the group or the association has incurred from the 5th round fetching
of fish from Lake Ziway. Note: Currently their linkage with the Gilgel Gibe Reservoir has been
disconnected and some legal issues such as auditing the former bankrupsy and ways of reforming
them.
Ways forward to facilitate more number of women farmers form
new groups and perform Again

1. Characterize members of the new group to be formed and the old ones who have been
participating in fish trading activities

Bases for characterization

a. Their socio economic background and current livelihood strategies: Such
as monthly income, type and name of the trading activity (petty trading) in
which they have been participating so far, if it exists. This is to help form
homogenous groups who are willing to act together and with the same
effort irrespective of their personal behavior. The more homogenous the
group is the more likely it is to successfully perform.
b. Previous Experience of working in groups: Experience matters in helping
the group perform well under a good leader.
c. Time to be allotted: The time to be allotted for the fish trading activity, the
one into which the new or old group is going to be engaged is very
important to avoid competition among group members regarding the time
they had to sacrifice for this (this fish trading) and promote synergy.
2. Classify and Group Members of the new group to be formed based on the above Criteria
3. Form a criterion based grouping system on the basis of a written rules and regulations
4. Have a discussion with members of the new and the old group on the new binding rules
and regulations on which the groups rely. Draw feedback from each member of the
group/s on the new group regulation and get a confirmation of their compliance.
5. Make a re-arrangement on the team composition of the newly to be formed and old group
members: For Instance, on the bases of the time to be allotted for fish trading activity
and presence/absence of an alternative source of income, group members would be
allotted to one of the 2 groups to be formed: Those in fish trading and net
making/mending. As a strategy, those who do not have ample time or have an alternative
source of income would be assigned to net making while those who do not have an
alternative source of income or activity and but ample time to perform other activities
would be allotted to a full time fish trading activity.
6. Recruit a Manager and employed workers for the fish trading shop so that each member
of the association (group) would have minimal or no contact with the employees. This
would minimize the problem of embezzlement and conflict over benefit sharing among the
association’s members. The recruited manager would be accountable to the group’s
performance and would be controlled by 3 representatives: One would be from members
of the association, one from the woreda office of youth and women (the organizing office)
and one from NFALRC, a representative of the TTC directorate.
7. Completion of Legal issues for responding to the previously occurred mess by some
members of the women’s association (group) “Hulum Yalfal” who have been engaged in
fish trading activities.
 8. Train Members of the association on Small business management and entrepreneurship
skills; including organizational leadership and legal frameworks of small scale
businesses. Here our role would be teaching and training (on some instances), directing
and facilitating the training delivery process. Some aspects of this training is planned to
be outsourced.
9. Exit Strategy: When shall we exit? According to the EIAR’s Steps and procedures for
technology commercialization. We are left with 3 Major duties to be fulfilled for this year
(2010 E.C: Not the Budget year). The duties are: Capacity Building and
Institutionalizing, Monitoring and Evaluation by taking back up measures based on
lessons learned from similar studies and interventions and popularization of success
stories. Capacity building would be done in the form of training on some of the
unaddressed issues of small scale business development. This is because the training
which was delivered previously by the center was purely technical: fishery related and
could not address the current problem. Institutionalization would be made by developing
a system of incubating small businesses in a way which could be learned from and
adopted by other agencies to replicate it to other areas. Monitoring and Evaluation
would be a regular task planned to be conducted once in a week and 4 days per month.
Our exit from the system is planned to be after 1 year after the current year. Till then,
data would be collected on group performance in the process but the actual
empowerment change which has been achieved due to our intervention would not be
done due to the presence of the noise factor (group conflict) and a need for bringing the
withdrawn members back to the group.

Photos: - Events during the meeting held with the fish trading women’s association “Hulum Yalfal”