The Swaziland Rural Women’s Assembly (SRWA) believes in building its membership’s skills so that they are able to solve their own problems by themselves and not rely mostly on outsiders who don\’t even know the communities. This approach proved to be working for the movement as most SRWA women groups has remained visible and approaching issues in communities even without external funding support.

During the month of June the movement has been consumed in assisting 6 selected women groups of SRWA members in developing an agenda, which is a tool where women mention all the issues that hinder their development and their participation in decision making bodies then put it in thematic areas then deliberate on the root causes of this issues so that they are able to come up with sustainable solutions to this problems. Finally they map actors to help them solve these problems, the actors may include the inner council (local authority), Non Governmental Organization, local pastors, Community Development Committee, Government institutions to mention a few.

These issues are almost similar across all communities in the four regions of Swaziland. Trending issues involved economic empowerment were women denied land access and inheritance, the lack of reliable markets to sell their products at a fee that they will be able to determine, lack of capital to start their businesses in a scale that would yield profits for them. Within one group there is a disabled member who mentioned that the wheelchair she uses disabled her from easily moving around selling her products. The other common issue was climate change, women live by selling what they farm but the change in weather patterns has caused a loss for the members.

Young women on the other hand had issues around education, these issues included lack of scholarships, colleges being far from the rural communities and lack of unemployment. On decision making bodies two women from different geographic regions of Swaziland mentioned that they stopped being members of the traditional authority as their views are not considered. In her own words one said “In that committee I was the only woman and whenever I suggested something it was not considered hence I thought I should leave those men because I don’t add any value being in the committee.