When she started the public speaking class in her village last year, Juanina Marques didn't know where it would take her. The class was part of a series organized by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a USAID partner, to help women gain confidence in voicing their ideas and opinions in public settings.

The program teaches rural women basic techniques for speaking in public. In turn, the women learn something about civic participation, community interaction, and advocacy. And along with developing organizational and leadership skills, the sessions boost the women's self-confidence. Participants in the NDI program have gone on to run for office and win in Timor-Leste's recent local elections.

After attending the class, Marques was inspired to use her new skills to encourage her community move in a new direction. With some of the other women of her village, Marques created Widows Living in Poverty (Feto Faluk Moris Kia) to help them help themselves. The group has 52 members, of whom 30 are widows.

The focus of the group is growing cotton. Cotton is the fiber of Timor-Leste's traditional cloth, tais, woven and dyed with great skill by the women. Good quality tais commands a high price, but cotton is a scarce commodity. Finding the extra resources to buy seeds and expand planting areas had always been impossible for the individual women. With their new-found confidence, they established a formal group, approached donors and the government, and found support. Now the group is managing a larger cotton crop as well as planting more cassava, sweet potatoes, other vegetables, and dye plants for their traditional cloth. The group has the resources to hire a tractor for plowing, and its efforts have even financed a new community center for the village.

Juanina and her friends are very proud of their achievements. Now they can harvest enough cotton to weave the high-quality traditional cloth and market it. The bigger vegetable crop is also helping members of the group improve their families' nutrition and earn extra income to send their children to school. All the members of Widows Living in Poverty are enjoying a better quality of life. As their incomes increase, perhaps they will need to think of a new name for their group.

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