Thanks to Merankabandi, Dorothea no longer lives as an indigenous, but as a woman leader

Dorothea Nsengiyumva is a 53-year-old Twa woman living in the commune of Mugoboka, Gitega province. She is a participant in the Merankabandi social net support project. She is a participant in the Merankabandi social safety net project, a social protection project aimed at supporting the most vulnerable households in Burundi.

Merankabandi is based on a combined approach of a cash transfer coupled with a beneficiary accompaniment called complementary activities that makes this program unique and increases its impact potential.

Lack of dignity in the community, malnutrition, and children dropping out of school were the main challenges faced by Batwa community households on a daily basis before the Merankabandi project. Today, their lives are improved thanks to the cash transfers and complementary activities of the project.

Dorothea remembers the deplorable living conditions she experienced before the arrival of Merankabandi: extreme poverty, a house covered with dry banana bark, difficulty accessing credit.

"Our community have always been backward compared to others, we lived in small houses without a roof, often we didn't even have enough to feed our children. We lived only by making pottery, which brought us almost nothing, and the children had difficulty studying because of the lack of school materials and many other necessary things", says Dorothea.

The Batwa are considered the indigenous people of Burundi. According to a census conducted by UNIPROBA (Unissons-nous pour la Promotion des Batwas) in 2008, the number of Batwa in Burundi is estimated at 78,071, or about 1% of the population.

The Batwa were once hunter-gatherers in the forests of the country. They had no access to land, health care or education. The Batwa had no legal rights, largely because their births were not registered with the civil registry.

"I did not go to school, but the Merankabandi project taught me the basics of life. Now I save money, I have access to credit, my children go to school without problems, I even built a sustainable house for myself and my children, and we no longer have food problems. We have said goodbye to poverty", Dorothea says with a broad smile

The Merankabandi project did not leave them behind; they benefited from the project like the other beneficiaries, with specific support to them, such as the purchase of school materials, agricultural inputs and housing improvements.

In order to promote the legal recognition of children and marriages in Batwa households benefiting from the project, sensitization sessions were regularly organized for them. These sessions focused on the registration of children to obtain birth certificates and the regularization of marriages.

"In our community, it was rare to meet a Twa woman who mobilized others, but thanks to the lessons we learned in the Merankabandi project, confidence is reborn in us. I have been a leader in our solidarity group and now a member of the commune committee", says Dorothea.

The complementary activities of the Merankabandi project had a positive impact not only on household income, but also on self-confidence, skill building and family cohesion.

Complementary activities focused on financial education, maternal and child health, family planning, infant and young child feeding and early childhood development, as well as additional support for the formation of solidarity groups to ensure the sustainability of actions after the program ended.

Beneficiary households have been lifted out of poverty and their lives have improved.

Social safety nets, such as the Merankabandi project, are an effective approach to poverty reduction; they help protect families from the consequences of economic shocks, natural disasters, and other crises; and they form the basis for social protection of the most vulnerable.

"When the project ended, we did not cross our fingers, we all joined the savings and credit cooperatives, now we have the right to education, health care, access to land. I thank the Merankabandi project for teaching us how to survive even without the project. May what you have done for us, you do it for the whole country", Says Dorothea

The Merankabandi Social Nets Support Project was implemented by the Government of Burundi with technical assistance from UNICEF and financial support from the World Bank.