Introduction

We spent the first month in Maputo e-mailing various NGO’s and International organisations and speaking to people already living and working in Mozambique. We were given a contact for ActionAid by a mutual friend and after a couple of weeks were told to book flights to
Quelimane, the capital of the Zambezia province.

On arriving in Quelimane it became apparent that the volunteer positions with ActionAid would take time to organise and might not even be available. We were faced with the prospect of spending a further week or more in Quelimane, or flying back to Maputo to start the job-hunting again.

One benefit of having nothing to do was that we were able to talk to each other about what we wanted to achieve in Mozambique and what kind of projects we would be interested in. Over the course of a week we formulated ‘Plan B’. If the ActionAid volunteer positions fell through we would stay in Zambezia and begin our own project.

One thing we felt was that women, especially in rural areas, lacked the opportunity to speak freely among themselves. Their roles were primarily as wives and mothers. In Western society women are able to meet with their friends in confidence to discuss, advise, console and commiserate. We also have access to a wealth of information: magazines, books, television and internet.

We wanted to improve the lives of marginalised women by increasing access to information, access to training and accessibility to other women in similar situations to exchange ideas and advice.

Although neither of us had any experience and knew that most projects were destined to fail we felt that they had some good, clear ideas, and lots of motivation.