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This is a recipe for everyday use, however, it should be adapted to local conditions, local ingredients, patience and daily slow stirring for best results

Ingredients 

• Heaps of active rural women in villages, communities and local farmer associations
• Large doses of committed leaders
• Buckets full of loud voices and clear demands
• Clear platform for action
• Strong critique of the system that oppressed and exploits women
• Many kilograms of healthy rejection of patriarchy
• Fresh ideas, locally picked alternatives
• Bags of information and resources
• Bottles of alliances and partnerships

Method

• This recipe requires low and consistent work for best results. First, bring together the ingredients into one district, one territory or a region and listen to the local voices and local issues, then add hands, feet, and heads that are full of motivations and ideas that believe they can solve their own problems and bring about change. Make sure the ingredients consists of a mix of freshly picked young leaves and the leaves that have weathered several storms.
• Continue slowly and carefully to pour in popular education and consciousness-raising. As you pour, add generous hands full of local herbs that explain why we are poor and why rural women are at the bottom of the pile. Then strengthen the collective leadership, allow the issues to bubble and surface. Make sure the mixture understands why we are cooling a feminist brew.
• Stir until all the ingredients are well mixed, allow mixture to settle and work together, take actions on a regular basis. Slowly add values, care about our bodies, food, the environment and well being of our community and society.
• Grease the baking pan, pour in mixture and cook slowly. Watch all the time, this is a slow cook recipe but has proven results. From time to time you may have to turn up the heat.

Mercia Andrews, November 2014

* The Recipe for Change was published in the Food is life: Rural Women\’s Assembly Recipe Book: Cooking for Change. This recipe book is the first in a series of three publications.