Turning Sex Workers into Farmers in Ethiopia

China (right) with recently purchased chickens. Photo by Pol Cucala Bergadà.

China and her fellow gardeners say they would never go back to prostitution

By Nicholas Parkinson
Urban Agriculture in Ethiopia
Aug 25, 2011

Excerpt:

When 29 year old China Dessale approached the Wain Hotel where she used to work as a commercial sex worker, carrying a basket teeming with cabbage, carrots, lettuce and eggs, the hotel owner couldn’t believe his eyes. He remembered taking in China when she was 15 years old. In desperation, China had joined the same hotel to make a livelihood in Ethiopia’s risky commercial sex worker industry.

Today, China and 17 sex workers from Kombolcha work in a USAID Urban Gardens Program (USAID UGP) garden only a half kilometer from the hotel. The group originally started a poultry farm in 2006 through local implementing partner Nigat in the town of Kombolcha, in northeastern Ethiopia. Last year they diversified their portfolio and added vegetables to the thousands of eggs they were selling to various restaurants and cafés around town.

In 2010, the group graduated from the USAID UGP program and has been gardening nutritious vegetables since. In an odd play of events, their former care-taker has become one of their most valued customers. After graduation the group expanded its garden and with the 2010 savings purchased another 250 chickens.

Complete story here.