HIV-Positive Mothers to Gain Silk Production Skills

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 (Welenchiti, Ethiopia) – Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Family Health International (FHI) launched a program that will link HIV-positive mothers from community-based Mother’s Support Groups (MSG) with income generating opportunities. This unique program will improve the livelihoods of these mothers through commercial silk production - called the Silk Production and Innovation Network (SPIN). The program, funded by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), aims to enhance the economic security of AIDS-affected households by providing women with a valuable skill to produce and process raw silk. The initiative focuses on the heavily trafficked Addis Ababa-Djibouti transport corridor, whose highly mobile, poor population has a high HIV prevalence.

“Today our children are free from the virus.  With the medicine, we are healthy enough to take care of them.  With the work and income we will get from the silk project, we have hope for a better tomorrow.  I support the idea of calling this farm ‘Abdi Borru’ (or ‘’Hope for Tomorrow.”)” said a mother from the MSG during the launch participated in by MSG members, representatives from the Oromia Bureau of Health, Bureau of Trade, Bureau of Women and Children’s Affairs, Welenchiti Administration, USAID and Family Health International.
 
SPIN will train an initial 250 women in Mojo and Welenchiti towns in all aspects of the silk production process, including how to plant, maintain and harvest the castor plant, upon which the eri silk worm feeds, tending to the silk worms through a full production cycle, and building skills in market negotiation.  Consult Line Professional Services (CLIPS), an Ethiopian company, will build technical capacity among the MSG members, for an initial 12-month period.   Participating MSG women involved in the project have proven themselves to be effective in implementing HIV care and support activities.  But, because of economic hardship, many of these women must depend on high-risk survival strategies to meet the basic needs of their families. Economic hardship poses the threat of reversing hard-earned gains in sexual behavioral change.
 
SPIN’s approach is to ‘start with the market.’  Though there is a history of silk consumption in Ethiopia, primary silk production has never taken off on a significant scale.  SPIN’s approach is to prepare women to respond to recent increased market demand for high quality raw silk cocoons.

SPIN is an initiative of LifeWorks Partnership Trust, established by USAID/East Africa’s Regional Outreach Addressing AIDS through Development Strategies (ROADS) Project in 2007.  The ROADS II Project is a five-year HIV/health program supported by USAID/East Africa and bilateral missions and implemented by Family Health International. ROADS II is extending HIV/AIDS, family planning/reproductive health, malaria, maternal and child health and tuberculosis services along the major transport corridors of East and Central Africa. ROADS II works in 37 transport corridor communities in nine countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Uganda and Zambia. ROADS innovations include the “cluster” community-organizing model, LifeWorks programming, community-based alcohol counseling linked with HIV services, and locally driven responses to sexual and gender-based violence.