Better beekeeping changes lives!

Yeshiwas Desta is a farmer and the proud father of six children. His land is rocky and rugged and doesn’t produce enough to provide food for his family. Yeshi worked hard to change the fertility of the land by terracing, planting forage grass, and diversifying his crops by adding banana, mango, avocado, coffee, soybean, and ginger. In spite of this good work, his income was not meeting his financial needs.
 
To provide some additional income Yeshi also harvested honey from his hives - three traditional and two modern beehives - and earned ETB 300-500 per month or $10 - $17 USD. In 2017 Yeshi joined the Belela Kololo Cooperative - a WEEMA supported cooperative - where he learned how to build different types of beehives with local materials and benefitted from the experience of the other beekeepers and trainers.
 
Today the lion's share of Yeshi’s monthly income comes from beekeeping. He now has 15 transitional hives, 2 modern hives, and 18 traditional hives and his monthly income has quadrupled!
 
Yeshi now earns income sufficient to meet the needs of his family, including the materials for all of his children to attend school. And, he has a vision for the future. His long term goals include buying cattle and oxen, constructing a shelter for those animals, building additional modern beehives, and ensuring and even improving his livelihood.

To learn more about other work WEEMA does in the area of economic empowerment work, please click here. To support WEEMA’s beekeeping work please click on the Donate button above.