SORO Association (Sustainable Opportunity for Rural Organisations) is a Malian NGO founded in 2013. SORO works to uphold the rights of and for women and girls, especially focusing on access to resources and girl enrolment at schools in the area of Diola – Segou Region.

SORO Association has the following organisational targets to which the Voice-funded project contributes:

• One hundred people including 75 women and 25 men are actively involved in the enrollment and retention of children especially girls to school,
• Fifty women in 25 groups are introduced to the use of new information technologies and are committed to support the school fees for their children away.
• Ten groups have an Orange Money account allowing them to secure their funds.
• Two hundred fifty people, including 200 women and 50 men received and used information on the rights of women in relation to citizenship.
• Ten children (boys and girls) in difficult situations are sponsored by members of women groups EPC to keep them in school.

In rural areas in general and especially in Diola-Segou, women, youth and people with disabilities hardly have access to productive resources. And those that have access, don’t have control, even though the agricultural orientation law stipulates respectively in articles 53 and 54 that: The government guarantees equal rights to women and men in rural areas, in particular in agricultural exploitation. The involvement of youth in all activities bound to the agricultural professions constitutes a priority for central and local governments.

The Voice-funded project aims for improvement of living conditions of the farming population especially women, youth (girls and boys) and people with disabilities, enabling them to influence for equal treatment in regard to access to resources (land, finances) through capacity building. The project is executed in the regions of Sikasso and Mopti in Mali.

The project is based on an inclusive approach that combines strategies of mobilisation, information, sensitisation, empowerment, data collection and treatment and advocacy/lobbying, in favour of a change of policies and practices with regard to the layers above mentioned.