Fostering good health and economic resilience for girls and women in Africa
With ‘International Day of the Girl’ taking place this week, we’ve taken the opportunity to share the progress we made in our partnership with CARE International.
Skincare company Beiersdorf is delighted to share the progress it has made together with partner CARE in the support of girls and women in Africa. This shared mission aims to improve their access to equitable and qualitative health services and enhance their economic resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.
With its ‘Care Beyond Skin’ initiative, in the past year Beiersdorf has extended its social engagement to ‘empower girls’ and contribute to a healthier and more cohesive society. As part of its Covid-19 aid program launched in March 2020, Beiersdorf provided €50m to support people hit hardest by the pandemic.
Founded in 1945, CARE International is one of the world’s biggest aid organizations. CARE’s mission is to fight poverty and exclusion, so that girls and women around the world can lead a self-determined life. In 2020, CARE worked in 104 countries worldwide and reached over 92 million people in need.
Beiersdorf has partnered with CARE across four countries since early 2021, setting up projects in Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, the Western Region of Kenya (Kakamega and Bungoma Counties), Afgoi in Somalia and Kassala State in Sudan. The main focus of these projects is to improve the access to equitable and qualitative health services, particularly for girls and women, and to increase their economic resilience against the socio-economic impacts of Covid-19.
Ethiopia: Financial support for women to (re-)start their businesses
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, many women in Ethiopia were able to earn their money from small businesses. However, after the pandemic hit, many of these businesses collapsed. A lot of families that depend on the income from these women’s businesses faced existential hardships. We aim to provide financial support to these households. Almost 1,000 households have already been identified for support.
It was also important to us to provide all citizens of Dire Dawa with essential information about Covid-19. Therefore 80 posters — adapted from the World Health Organization — brochures and banners were developed and displayed to help prevent the transmission of the virus. These reached more than 30,000 people. Additionally, CARE produced a radio advertisement about the coronavirus pandemic and its repercussions, which was broadcast twice a day, reaching 1.1 million people.
Kenya: Providing women and children with health-care information
In many rural areas of Kenya, basic information about Covid-19 is hard to find, even one-and-a-half years into the pandemic. This leads to a high risk of infection, but also to fear of vaccination. With our project, CARE provides women and young people in particular with everything they need to know, using as approach based on peer education that enables students to pass on their learnings to family and friends. We are happy to report that almost 3,000 participants were reached in the first quarter of 2021.
Somalia: Helping women to run their households
As a first and urgent measure, CARE supported health facilities by providing staff with a supplement for their meagre salary. But the pandemic had quite serious effects on economic activities as well. Therefore, our aim was to help to establish Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in different communities, especially where households faced food shortages. VSLAs are a flagship project, created by CARE, which first started as a women-led project 30 years ago in West Africa. Today, this model has been replicated successfully in many countries around the world. They provide simple savings and loan facilities in communities that do not have access to formal financial services.
Since many households in Somalia are led by women, nearly 80 percent of the people benefitting from this project are female. VSLAs also increase solidarity among groups of disadvantaged women, provide a platform for developing business enterprises and establish links that facilitate the education and training of women.
Sudan: Protective equipment is a big step
In Sudan, the most basic necessities are often lacking. Therefore, it was important for Beiersdorf to support CARE by equipping people with essential hygiene supplies. Three health facilities have been provided with materials for infection prevention and control. ’CARE packages’” with personal protective equipment include soap, disinfectants, hand sanitizers, surgical masks, surgical gloves and cleaning tools. CARE is supporting with the treatment of COVID-19 patients who suffer from acute respiratory infections, but is taking care of people suffering from other diseases like diarrhea or malaria.
The Beiersdorf and CARE projects will run across these four countries until December 2022.
“We may feel as if the pandemic is almost over in our hemisphere, but it’s far from beaten around the world. Simple measures such as information, personal protective equipment and income opportunities can help girls and women become more resilient against the effects of the pandemic,” says Karl-Otto Zentel, CEO of CARE Germany.
Find out more about our ‘Empowering Girls’ mission
Find out more about Beiersdorf
Find out more about CARE
