When you meet Zafarunnisa, a resident in the village Muhammad Hassan Halo, Tando Muhammed Khan, you can immediately sense how protective she is of her two goats.
‘Sometimes, I feel my affection for them is similar to what I feel for him,’ she bounces the one-year old she’s holding while she makes rounds. As beloved as her lastborn Abdullah is, his birth has been hard for Zafarunissa and her family. ‘I had to get a C-section which was not something that I had anticipated after 6 natural births. My husband had no choice but to sell our goats to pay for it.’
Reared largely by women, goats are the most important sources of income for some of the poorest families in Sindh. They are also quite the liquid asset, often providing quick cash in times of need. But this can also plunge their owners, like Zafarunissa and her husband, into debt.
‘My husband and I hit an all-time low. We struggled to feed our children and had to borrow constantly to the point where we couldn’t. We truly felt like we had lost control.’
Apart from their crippling debt, Zafarunissa became anemic after her C-section with Abdullah. Whatever food the couple managed to scour, was put mostly towards feeding their children.
Things, however, have started to look up for this family with European Union-funded Programme for Improved Nutrition in Sindh (PINS) being carried out in her village. Zafarunissa and her community have been busy learning about cultivating kitchen gardens through the Farmer Field School where Agriculture Entrepreneurs carry out sessions on different topics. Peppered throughout the village are small plots outside homes with the beginnings of something green – and exciting.
For Zafurunissa, however, PINS is doing much more. Through a grant provided for pregnant and lactating women who score between 0 and 12 range on the Poverty Scorecard (the poorest among the poor), she has become the sole owner of two goats. For Zafarunissa’s family and others like her, PINS aims to increase household-level access and consumption of animal-sourced foods (meat, milk and other dairy products) and improve their dietary intake.
Each of the 6250 women who will receive grants under PINS to purchase goats will also be provided with information about the basics of livestock management and use of milk for daily consumption and calcium intake. Through this, PINS hopes to encourage a surplus for the women who own goats to help them supplement their household income through the sale of livestock and dairy products.
By making women the sole owners of the goats, they can decide what to do with them or the income generated from them. Along with boosting their decision-making capabilities, this also ensures decisions made to better the quality of life they live, empowering women like Zafarunissa in more ways than one.