The Hoomsen Women Farmers Co-operative Society is a co-operative society registered by two groups of women farmers. They both started as an association of twenty women farmers, located in a small farming village called Namess in Shepwan community of Shendam Local Government Area in Plateau State. The group saw the need to come together and support each other at individual and group level through communal farming activities, at times for a fee or as support to members as is culturally practiced. The Co-operative is currently made up of a total number of forty fully registered members. As a registered co-operative group they cultivate jointly, harvest, store and later sell the harvest in the market and some of the proceeds is plowed into the co-operative’s account to serve as a loan to members during the lean farming season that is characterised with lack of food in some households.

This project is building on what we have started, to reach out to more women especially those who also want to benefit from the project, to coordinate our activities better, to create that safe space where we can come together and engage. More importantly, we hope that when we are better strengthened as a group, we can seek for representation of more women at community level. That way, we can be sure that our voices are heard. Therefore, we want the project to support the following:

• Mobilise and sensitise more women from other communities within the local government because we believe that if we come together in large numbers and with one voice, we will achieve our goal.
• Build the capacity (confidence) of the women so that they will be individually empowered and to enlighten them on the need to come together and make their voices heard through capacity building. Now they see few of us under Voice as champions whose voices can be heard, we want to help others coming new to also have confidence in theirselves
• Engage and liase with the traditional gatekeepers to make them see reasons why there is need for the voice of women to be heard within the traditional council.
• Support the political ambitions of any woman within our local authority by organizing ourselves and mobilizing support for her during any election whether at community level or at local government level.
• Support meetings of our women so that we are united under our safe spaces.

The project seeks to build the capacity of women psychologically to boost their confidence and build them financially to help them some of their family needs. It seeks to make the voice of women heard in times of decision making by the local authorities. It also seeks to enlighten other people in the community especially those that are facing the same challenge on how to speak up and make their voices heard.