The recent episode of BBC’s Casualty which featured a strong FGM storyline was developed with the assistance of Daughters of Eve and three young people from Integrate Bristol. In this two-part story we follow a young woman dealing with the dangers of FGM. (Watch Saturday's episode on BBC iPlayer).

FGM is child abuse and it is vital that front-line professionals who meet girls on a regular basis know exactly what the danger signs are and how to react accordingly. Children aren’t able to use legislation like an adult and can face misconceptions of FGM being carried out because their families ‘love them’ from the professionals they seek to protect them - the FGM legislation is not effective by itself.

It may seem that FGM is currently being talked about everywhere but the current media coverage has been years in the making and has taken countless meetings and doors being closed in our faces for us to get here. As a British survivor of FGM, I have witnessed the conversations about FGM over the years come and go, but what they all had in common was a focus on speaking to those either historically affected by the practice – or those that upheld and enabled it to happen.

For the most part, people have been discussing FGM as a cultural issue that happens in ‘lands far away’ and that we should educate those carrying it out. My view is that we need to step away completely from the terms ‘culture’ and ‘community’ and stop trying to make ourselves feel better about not doing anything by suggesting that FGM is based on ‘love’. This is one of the biggest misconceptions – and an extremely dangerous one too. FGM is not a loving act. It is violence against women and girls and any strategy for its elimination needs to be based in this framework.

Daughters of Eve is delighted to see £35 million made available by the UK government to tackle this issue in Africa and elsewhere, but we must make sure that experts on this issue are being listened to.  We should be learning from holistic models such as in Burkina Faso and Kenya, where recent Demographic and Health Surveys have shown prevalence rates to have fallen more than elsewhere (up to 30%). These models consider FGM to be violence against women and girls and are effective because they combine child protection and legislation, as well as educational measures, to empower those at risk or affected.

As a form of violence against women, FGM takes place because of structural inequalities in society – particularly gender inequality.  We need to empower and protect those at risk to make sure that it is eliminated. Any approach to end FGM which does not address these inequalities will only leave a vacuum for another form of violence against women – or for those who carry out FGM to say that it does not exist.

Progress is definitely being made. In Bristol, we have hundreds of young people who are not only standing up and speaking out about FGM, but questioning the role of women within their communities. They are being empowered with language that has not just changed their lives, but also those of their mothers. Women from a highly FGM-affected population are also calling it violence against women and girls and linking FGM to all the other forms of abuse they have experienced.  As one woman said: ‘If it is ok to cut a girl because she is a girl, then what you will do to her as a woman will be worse’. This change has not come easily for those of us that have stood up against FGM. We face death threats on a regular basis, we have been attacked on the street and lost people we once believed to be friends.

My personal aim is to afford young women the same privileges that I had and for them to understand that within them there is great potential.  I was freely educated and given the space and support to develop my identity. I was allowed to be me and not have a predefined culture projected on to me, which is sadly happening to girls today.

We need to all stand together and empower the girls who are seeking our support. As Tamasha says on Casualty, quoting a young women we have worked with: ‘It never stops hurting. It is always painful’. Let us not deepen that pain by undermining the bravery of those women and girls that come forward not only to tell their stories, but also to live a life of their choosing.

If I could wish for one thing to change as a result of the Casualty episodes, it would be for everyone to see the child in front of us as a girl asking for help and not part of an ‘other’ culture. As we say at Daughters of Eve, ‘If you save one girl you save a generation’.

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British government.

Find out what the British government is doing to eliminate female genital mutilation.

Last seen on the CSW agenda in 2003, violence against women and girls (VAWG) is quite rightly back in the spotlight. And now, more than ever, it is absolutely critical to achieve consensus on the conclusions of the session if we are to secure strong international commitment to take action. Timely also, is this renewed focus given the huge opportunity CSW has to influence how gender is incorporated and prioritised in a post-2015 framework.

At every single event I’ve attended so far at CSW social norms and how we go about transforming them is uppermost in people’s minds. Indeed, at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) we have been working for some time on building the evidence around how gender justice is invariably shaped by the formal and informal laws, norms, attitudes and practices that limit the attainment and exercise of women and girls’ capabilities. We know that just as gender inequality causes and compounds women’s poverty, so too poverty and marginalisation exacerbate gender inequality. It is a vicious circle that can only be broken by tackling the social norms and attitudes at the root which govern and shape women’s unequal position in society.

Tackling violence against women requires tackling social norms and values, as in this workshop run in South Africa by the NGO Sonke Gender Justice. Photo: Lindsay Mgbor/DFID

So in the spirit of this year’s headline topic, let’s take a closer look at how this is the case for harmful traditional practices affecting women and girls; and specifically, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C).

Harmful traditional practices include: acid violence, dowry and bride price, early/forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, ‘honour’ crimes, corrective rape, female infanticide, and ritual sexual slavery. They are, for the most part, carried out without consent from the individual involved and are therefore some of the worst violations of human rights. They are a product of discriminatory social norms that aim to uphold cultural ideas about gender roles and social relations that ascribe women a lower status in society. Such practices are widespread across the globe, in some cases pandemic, and no country in the world remains unaffected.

FGM/C is a particularly taboo practice, and one that is gaining a great deal of renewed attention at the moment. Taking place in 28 countries in Africa, as well as in some countries in the Middle East and Asia, and in diaspora communities elsewhere (not least the UK), FGM/C has so far affected nearly 140 million girls and women. Its persistence is due in no small part to myths about hygiene and female aesthetics. It is also attributed to social pressures associated with control over girls’ sexuality, as well as traditional values regarding coming of age and transition to adulthood. The associated consequences can be devastating, as FGM/C increases women and girls’ and womens' vulnerability to HIV, infection, and birth complications, including fistula, a leading cause of maternal mortality in Africa.

FGM/C is also linked closely to early marriage, forced marriage and marriage by abduction. Girls from impoverished backgrounds are more vulnerable to harmful cultural practices, partially because of the link between them and girls’ perceived marriageability and associated financial pressures. Girls in these situations, as well as their female children, are unlikely to continue education or engage in other activities to enhance their capabilities beyond the domestic sphere.

In recent years, I’d argue that FGM/C has been approached with caution; almost reluctance. Considered to be an untouchable, immovable cultural tradition, its widespread and entrenched nature seemed to preclude action for change. Campaigns by organisations such as the Orchid Project, along with the success of Tostan’s Community Empowerment Programmes in Senegal where 5,300 villages have entirely ceased to practice FGM/C, have shown that it is possible to effect change. In the UK, concern over the 24,000 girls or so at risk of FGM/C domestically is mounting; a plea letter just this week by a young girl from Ghana desperate to avoid being cut has brought the issue to the attention of the British public.

Last week Lynne Featherstone announced at CSW the UK’s intention to invest up to £35 million towards ending FGM/C  in the world’s poorest countries. Encouraging as it is to see such commitment, what’s critical is to ensure that the money is spent effectively. What we need now is much clearer evidence around the types of interventions that work when it comes to tackling social norms.

So how do we even begin to change social norms? One thing that’s been reiterated time and again throughout the first week at CSW is the critical importance of involving men and boys as change-agents. Only by engaging them will men and boys recognise that gender equality benefits everyone in society and we can then begin to challenge traditional constructions of masculinity and femininity that underpin gendered discrimination and violence. Policies that encourage and normalise greater involvement of fathers in the care of their children, as well as education initiatives aimed at school age boys and girls are just a couple of examples of how this is being done.

The involvement of men and boys is critical in ending violence against women, such as in this community project in South Africa, where young men are given strong role models to help them avoid becoming involved in violence. Photo: Lindsay Mgbor/DFID.

In fact, what’s needed is an integrated approach that includes every member of society and gives individuals and communities the opportunities necessary to set the change agenda for themselves. All too often the agenda is defined at the top when in fact change is far likelier if all levels of society have had their say.

Nevertheless, it is the renewed commitment by states to women’s human rights agreements that sends the strongest to message to those that would seek to derail the hard-won gains made by the gender equality agenda. Another failure to achieve an outcome document (resistance by various conservative governments and the Vatican, which has a seat on the UN as a non-member permanent observer is already happening) is simply not an option.

If ever there was a time to stop treating the symptoms and actually tackle the cause of women and girls’ poverty - if we really want to make long-lasting and transformative progress - this is it.

As part of a four year UK aid supported study – Transforming the lives of adolescent girls – ODI have published a background note exploring the extent to which gender justice for adolescent girls is shaped by formal and informal laws, norms, attitudes and practices that limit girls opportunities and chances in life. Click here for more information.

You can add your voice to UK Aid’s pledge campaign for UN action on violence against women here

Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

Smallholders grow 70% of the world's food. They are critical to the production of many of the tropical agricultural commodities we take for granted - 80% of our coffee is grown by smallholders and 90% of the world's cocoa. But many farmers are trapped in a cycle of poverty, made worse by decades of price volatility and underinvestment in agriculture, and now facing new threats from a changing climate. This phenomenon is threatening the very sustainability of many of the products we enjoy on a daily basis. Our global food system is unbalanced. It doesn't work well enough for consumers - horsegate has shown that. And it is wasteful - consumers in rich countries waste as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. Recent World Health Organisation research reveals that, for the first time ever, the number of years of healthy living lost globally as a result of over-eating outweighs the number lost by people eating too little.

We know there is enough food for everyone, but everyone is not getting enough food. 2013 is the year that we need to find better solutions. The UK is hosting the G8 Summit for the first time since 2005 and the week before the G8 the UK government will host a summit on food and nutrition. This is an unprecedented opportunity for leadership to tackle the challenges to the future of our food system; challenges that will need changes from all of us - farmers, the public, and companies as well as governments.

Fairtrade has made real gains in the last few years, bringing lasting benefits to more than 1.25 million producers in over 60 developing countries. This has been supported by DFID through a Programme Partnership Agreement of £12 million over four years. The grant was given to Fairtrade globally to help scale up our work supporting farmers in developing countries to access better terms of trade in global markets. And over the life of this grant Fairtrade has continued to buck the trend by growing well even in the teeth of recession. In the UK, Fairtrade sales grew 19% in 2012, to £1.56bn. Britain now leads the world in Fairtrade.

This support has enabled Fairtrade to reach more people, but it has also helped us bring the benefits of trade to more fragile communities and to begin to target our interventions more. Through this Fairtrade now works with olive farmers in Palestine, raisin farmers in Afghanistan and coffee smallholders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are also able to support women's groups, like the dynamic entrepreneurs of the Akoma Women's Co-operative in Ghana, who have begun marketing Fairtrade shea butter.

That is a great start, but it is not enough. We need to step up the pace. We need to reach more farmers and workers in ways that matter to them and that are relevant in today's volatile climate. We need to identify the circumstances under which Fairtrade can be truly dynamic, which producers can use as a springboard to a stronger future.

Michael Gidney in Kenya at the Finlay, DFID, Co-op tea project with one of the smallholder farmers. Picture: Fairtrade Foundation

Last month I visited two projects in Kenya which are helping producers do just that. In the tea growing region of Kericho, in Western Kenya, Finlays Beverages and the Co-operative Group – with support from DFID – have been working with the Fintea Growers Co-operative Union, which has a membership of around 15,000 smallholder tea farmers, to develop its business. Fintea Growers gained Fairtrade certification in 2011 and this Fairtrade Fortnight they are supplying 50% of the tea The Co-operative's new 99 Tea Gold. Similarly, in the foothills of Mount Kenya, the 8,000 smallholders of the Iri-Aini Co-operative used the confidence that Fairtrade has given them to develop their own packing facility, working in partnership with Marks and Spencer, with support from DFID's FRICH fund. This enabled the smallholders to capture 60% more value at source and has spurred them on to start selling their tea locally as part of an exciting new move to launch Fairtrade to the domestic market in Kenya.

Smallholder farmers are not a 'problem', neither are they passive 'beneficiaries'. Indeed, FAO figures show that smallholders themselves already invest US$170 billion a year into their own farms, four times more than investment from all other funding sources put together. With the right support they will build better businesses and make lasting change happen in their communities. And of course we need to ensure the voice of smallholders is heard as we look for lasting solutions to our unbalanced food system. As Beatrice Makwenda from the National Association of Small Farmers in Malawi (NASFAM) once told us, "the person wearing the shoe knows best where it pinches".

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

One of the reasons I'm here is because the theme this year is "the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against women." Orchid Project is a London-based NGO with a vision of a world free from female genital cutting (FGC) so this year's CSW is particularly relevant.

FGC has been discussed at the UN level for years. We've had all sorts of instruments and tools debated and signed up to. However, recently there's been renewed energy and discussion around this issue. In fact, you might call it a "perfect storm" of events that have led to a groundswell of opinion changing and moving towards action.

First Regional Public Declaration for the abandonment of FGC in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Picture: Angela Rowe/Tostan

These have included a recent UN General Assembly resolution "to intensify global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation" in December 2012, updates from UNICEF that prevalence figures of FGC are dropping globally and our own experience with our partner at country level, where communities are choosing to abandon the practice at an exponential rate.

Yesterday, an event was hosted by UNICEF, UNFPA and the Missions of Burkina Faso and Italy to the UN. With quite a line-up of speakers including the First Lady of Burkina Faso herself and DFID Minister Lynne Featherstone, it was a hot ticket for anyone involved in work on ending female genital cutting, and the room was packed.

We heard from representatives from Niger and Kenya as well as UNICEF, UNFPA and UNESCO and then the UK Minister, Lynne Featherstone, began by telling us about how she came to learn about the issue of FGC. She talked about her ministerial role as Champion for Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Overseas, a position she held before joining DFID. She also said that in her former portfolio as Home Office Minister, it had proven very difficult to get a prosecution for FGC.

This made finding out about the work of our partner Tostan in 2011 all the more important; she said that she really began to understand more about behavioural change and that she was inspired to hear that communities were choosing to abandon the practice. The Minister also mentioned that she will be visiting some of Tostan's projects in Senegal later this month.

She then paused, looked up at the room and clearly and slowly said: "I want to support work in Africa. This is why the UK government has chosen to play a leading role and will now invest £35 million to help end this practice." It was actually a breathtaking moment. A small silence followed, then, as the news sank in, people started to applaud.

We have been aware for some time that DFID was considering a large scale investment in ending FGC, but it was incredible for me and others in the room to hear just how sizeable this support will be. I was invited to make a short comment and was able to say on behalf of civil society organisations how much we welcomed the announcement of resources.

The Commission on the Status of Women was the ideal venue for the Minister to make this announcement, witnessed by and paying tribute to a room packed with women, who have been working tirelessly towards ending this practice.

We hope that DFID's funding injection will encourage other donors to join this movement, and will make a considerable impact on reducing the prevalence of female genital cutting.

Men supporting abandonment of FGC - First Regional Public Declaration for the abandonment of FGC in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Picture: Angela Rowe/Tostan

Ending FGC is a huge goal, but with the support of governments, donors, civil  societies and communities themselves, it begins to feel like the vision of a world  free from female genital cutting within a lifetime, could  well be on its way. I feel privileged to have been in the room in New York yesterday, to be one of the first to hear this news.

This year's CSW is not set up to be easy, given the controversial topic of violence against women, the lack of Agreed Conclusions last year, and the potential for regression. But it gives me hope for the Commission that the UK government is now choosing to invest in a previously taboo and hugely under-resourced human rights issue that has affected over 130 million women alive today.

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

The first time I really saw the impact of the money raised - a staggering £4.9 million thanks to the incredible generosity of the UK public and UK Aid Match - was at a hospital in the capital of the region, Mongo. I was shown around the children’s wards: two large tents and two concrete buildings, the latter being the intensive care units. These units hold the children who arrive here with the most extreme conditions, suffering from severe malnutrition with serious complications. Many with death in their eyes.

Thanks to money raised by Soccer Aid though, these children are being treated with life saving nutrition supplies and medicines, which means that within weeks it's possible to bring even the most severely affected child back to health again, and give them the hope of a brighter future. And this isn’t the only place that this critical nutrition intervention is happening thanks to UK aid; since 2010, the UK has more than doubled resources for tackling undernutrition, with a commitment to reach 20 million pregnant women and children under five with nutrition interventions by 2015.

Soccer Aid captain and actor Michael Sheen speaks to a mother, Harida Abda Raman, and her daughter, Aisha Ahmet, who is being treated for malnutrition at the in-patient hospital, supported by UNICEF, in Mongo, Chad. Picture: Jordi Matas/UNICEF

However, the difference that Soccer Aid money has made in Chad reaches much further than the country’s hospitals and out to a multitude of health centres that operate across the region, which work to prevent children from even getting to this severity of illness in the first place. The health workers at these centres are trained by UNICEF to identify and treat malnutrition, which, as a result of an ongoing food crisis caused by periods of extreme flooding and prolonged periods of drought, affects well over half the children living in Guera, Chad.

Michael speaks to a mother, Nairri Daha, with her child, 2 year old Halime Seid, at the transition centre at the in-patient hospital, supported by UNICEF, in Mongo, Chad. Picture: Jordi Matas/UNICEF

Another change that is now in place thanks to the support of the UK public and vital UK Aid Match, is the presence of the humble mosquito net. During my second day in Mongo, I visited a family whose youngest child had been extremely ill with malaria. The child was treated at the health centre and the family was given a mosquito net, paid for with money donated by UK aid, and now the entire family is safe from the life-threatening disease. We saw how they construct the net inside their home, which was a round mud hut with a roof made from sticks, carefully designed to keep the heat out. A mosquito net is such a simple thing, and yet it saves and changes lives.

In the last year the UK government has delivered more than 12 million bed nets to protect against malaria transmission, preventing over 66,000 child deaths. I’m very pleased to say that thanks to the UK aid matching Soccer Aid, amongst that incredible statistic are the children I personally met, who are now safe from this deadly disease.

Not having a mosquito net also means a child is at risk of serious wider health complications. Malaria causes diarrhoea. Diarrhoea means that the few nutrients the child is consuming aren’t absorbed and malnutrition sets in, worsening the child’s already fragile health. This in turn means the mother has to care for the child and therefore can’t earn a living by collecting fire wood or growing produce and the poverty deepens. 75% of the world’s poor - 3 billion people - depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Women make up almost half of the agricultural workforce in developing countries and often their contribution to a family's income is a vital one. By simply providing a net - a simple net - this domino effect of destruction could be halted before it even starts.

Michael plays football with children at Djoukoulikouli village in the Guera region of Chad. Picture: Jordi Matas/UNICEF.

Possibly the most unforgettable time for me during my trip to Chad was the afternoon I spent with a women’s group that runs awareness raising campaigns that promote good family practices, such as hand washing, making sure families are drinking clean water and using nets and ultimately learning how to keep their children safe from illnesses such as diarrhoea. I walked into a courtyard to find a sea of women, covered head to toe in a riot of colour. They were listening attentively to a UNICEF trained volunteer (who was also a nurse) explaining simple ways to adapt to the continuously changing and extremely challenging surroundings, where environmental factors are getting more extreme due to the effects of climate change. The women learnt about how to prepare and store food, what food to buy, how to treat water and how to use rehydration salts if their child does get ill. I learnt a lot myself - not only about protecting children from the every day challenges and dangers that this country presents, but also about the sheer strength of community in this region and the desire to change things, something that they can do with the help of a little bit of money and support, thanks to you.

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Every donation from the UK public to Soccer Aid was matched pound for pound with UK aid, helping UNICEF change the lives of even more children. See how else UK aid is changing lives at www.facebook.com/ukdfid and visit www.dfid.gov.uk/ukaidmatchappeals to see where you can have your donations to charity doubled.

Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

Handling expectation is something I've had to learn to deal with in and out of the pool, but I know that the resilience you build through sport can help in other parts of your life. In Zambia girls are expected to grow up to be a mother or a housewife, but they are now also being given the chance to challenge these expectations through sport.

In Zambia I visited a programme called 'Go Sisters' where I saw young women organise football, volleyball and netball matches for each other. Like I did through swimming, the sport was helping close friendships to be made, so it was nice that I was able to visit Go Sisters with two of my swimming friends - gold medallists Jo Jackson and Mel Marshall.

Rebecca in the pool with girls from the Go Sisters programme. Picture: Mel Paramasivan

Together we got involved in all the sport that was happening and heard from some of the girls about how sport has changed their lives. Linda Schcinda, one of the Go Sisters working on the programme said, "One of the main reasons we use sport is so that we can attract all these participants and impart different skills in them."

The girls enjoying their time. Picture: Mel Paramasivan

It’s true. Sport can bring people from all walks of life together. You only have to look at the Olympics and Paralympics to see how a whole country can be united by sport. The opportunity to learn new skills is true also. As a swimmer I've learned not just technical skills, but also how to communicate, be disciplined and always give everything I've got.The girls we saw were giving it their all. Even though some were looking after families at home or came from poor backgrounds, they made time to organise activities and teach girls about the importance of leading their own lives.

Female leaders in sport or any other field have a lot to teach to us. Jo and Mel are two people who are just so inspiring and have had an amazing impact in women’s swimming. The three of us were lucky to find swimming clubs when we started competing but for girls in Zambia it is not always easy to find a girls' football or volleyball club. Go Sisters makes sure that all girls have access to this by organising activities in schools and communities.

Go Sisters also trains 'peer leaders' who reach out within the community to encourage others girls to start playing sport as well as using sport to increase self-esteem and teach about issues like HIV/AIDS. Linda Schcinda said: "Girls have gone through Go Sisters and become recognised in their school and community and because of this, they have been linked to school or study scholarships."

Girls fromGo Sisters playing a netball match. Picture: Mel Paramasivan

For Linda, joining Go Sisters means that sport has become her career and it is opening up a world of opportunity for her, just as swimming has done for me. The opportunities I have had are beyond those I had dreamed of as an 11 year old in the pool.

Regardless of whether these women become Olympians or not, they are inspiring other young women in their community to get out there and use sport to change their lives. The doors for women are opening around the world and whether in the UK or Zambia, women are building new futures.

 "Go Sisters" is an EduSport initiative aimed at empowering girls by training and equipping them with skills and knowledge to pursue equality. It strives to empower girls by building physical resources, giving social recognition and challenging some traditional gender myths. Young girls are enrolled in sports programs where some of them are trained to become Youth Peer Leaders who are in charge of facilitating their groups' sports and life skills activities.

The programme is managed by International Development through Sport (IDS) the charity partner of UK Sport. For more information visit: www.uksport.gov.uk/pages/ids/

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

Pixie Lott recently visited Zambia to see Sport Relief cash in action. Picture: Comic Relief/Ben Gold

The last Sport Relief was the most successful ever, raising over £67 million pounds. In recognition of the generosity of the British public, the UK Government matched pound for pound £10 million of public donations - so twice as many people can benefit from improved conditions in urban slums across Africa. This cash is already hard at work in one of Lusaka's biggest slums called Chawama, home to nearly 70,000 people.

Women here have joined forces to run small savings schemes. Every day they pay money into a joint pot, which allows them to borrow cash at reasonable interest rates. This simple idea has allowed them to set up and develop businesses, improve their housing and health and provide for their families.

Widow and mother of eight, Valeria, 69, is one such example. With her money she bulk bought ground nuts, dried vegetables and cooking oil, which she sold from a stall outside her home.

Valeria is used to dealing with tragedy.  A few years ago she lost her husband and daughter, who had diabetes and failed to survive a double leg amputation. Despite her hardship she has been a leading voice in the women's savings scheme, which she joined nearly seven years ago. Since then she has helped her community by working to improve sanitation by getting 35 desperately needed new communal toilets built.

Valeria and her family were living in dangerous conditions, but her dedication and hard work in the savings scheme resulted in her being selected to have her home rebuilt. Her old home was at risk of falling down, putting her family in constant danger. But thankfully her life has now dramatically changed. She proudly showed me round her new three roomed home. Valeria pointed out to me that it has seven windows and electricity, a small thing to you and I, but her old home had neither. Now she has proper ventilation and can see when the sun goes down.

Built by members of her community, using interlocking insulating bricks that keep her home cool in the summer and warm in the winter, it cost just £2,500.  And she is not alone. Thanks to the savings scheme homes just like hers have been built in other slums across Lusaka, providing safe homes for many families. The savings scheme has also helped other women start their own knitting and hairdressing businesses. I even met one woman in Lusaka's third biggest slum who has learnt carpentry skills and now makes stools and sofas to help feed her nine children.

Pixie Lott with a project benficiary as they visit the plot where her new house is being built in Lusaka, Zambia. Picture: Comic Relief/Ben Gold

Felistus, 48, used to trade in Munkoyo roots which are used to mix with maize meal porridge to make a traditional drink, along with selling brooms and wooden spoons outside her home. When she accompanied some boys and girls from the youth savings scheme on a four-week carpentry course, Felistus was given the opportunity to learn the skills as well. She now makes wooden stools, tables and three piece suites, which she sells for up to £23. With a small loan from the savings scheme she has also started recycling and selling second hand children’s clothes.

Before she joined the scheme in 2009, Felistus couldn't afford to send three of her children to school but now they are all studying for their future and they eat three good meals a day. Next this entrepreneurial mum wants to borrow enough money so she can buy an electric sander, plane machine and electric cutter. These will improve the quality of the goods she sells and allow her to expand her carpentry venture. It just shows that when women work and save together as a team, they can help break the cycle of poverty.

With loans from as little as a few pounds, Felistus and thousands more women like her have been able to turn their lives around and provide happy stable futures for their families.

Film: Pixie sees a Lott of lives changed in Zambia

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

Around 140 million women are living with the effects of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C). In Africa alone, there are around three million girls who are undergoing the practice of FGM/C each year. This doesn’t even include the women and girls who are at risk in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and from these communities in Western countries.

Prevalence of FGM/C among women aged 15-49. Credit: UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme.

Some mothers are taking a strong stand against FGM/C. I have witnessed good examples of this in Senegal. Mariama, a 17-year-old born in Pata where FGM/C has been abandoned, is the mother of a two-year old girl and swears she would ‘never accept’ that her daughter would suffer as she did: “I had great difficulty at the time to have my first sex but also giving birth to my child.”

Khardiata, another young mother of an infant boy said: “I know I would not want my daughter to be circumcised if I had one.”  However, she believes that going against the wishes of the elder in her village in Gambia, where FGM/C is still widely practised, would be difficult. She thinks her village should follow the example of Pata in Senegal. She believes that greater understanding of the dangers of the practice at all levels, especially among older generations, will bear fruit and that more communities will eventually end the traditional practice.

Senegalese girls who are being spared the pain of female genital multilation/cutting as a result of Tostan's work supported by the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme. Picture: UNFPA

Encouraging countries to abandon the practice of FGM/C is what the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme is seeking to achieve. Last week, the Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting  Donor Working Group met at the Department for International Development (DFID) to discuss the issue of abandoning  the practice.

I am very excited to see that DFID is strongly coming on board to encourage the end of FGM/C as this  issue  does not receive enough attention or funding and the needs are enormous.

DFID’s commitment to ending Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting and the speech from Development Minister Lynne Featherstone was very inspiring. As she asserted in her speech to the working group: “Too little is invested in this issue – too little money, too little research, too little attention.”

The lack of funding has been a challenge for the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on FGM/C. Out of the $44 million that was budgeted in 2007-2008 when the Joint Programme was launched, there still is a $16 million shortfall for the 2008-2013 programme cycle.

The Donor Working Group was a good opportunity to realise the challenges we have to face, such as the need to have more coordination in an environment of limited resources. Also, the lessons learnt from the Joint Programme teach us that it would be a good idea to use what we learnt to address other culturally sensitive programming, such as early marriage.

There is increasing momentum within Africa now to end the practice. Change is happening and is being led from within communities to parliaments. Now that a resolution on this issue is currently being discussed at the United Nations General Assembly - a positive sign that FGM/C issues are being pushed further up the global agenda - we have a real opportunity to act and end the practice.

I am very encouraged by the fact that UK aid will support the campaign to end FGM/C in one generation. There is an important role for Britain – and the rest of the international community – to support this momentum and work to end this damaging practice.

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

To find out more about Female Genital Cutting listen to our podcasts with Sista Fa from Senegal and author and NHS nurse Christie Watson. You can also read our feature from this year to mark the International Day Against Female Genital Cutting.

Su Kahumbu Stephanou, Kenyan farmer and social entrepreneur

I'm Su Kahumbu Stephanou, a passionate Kenyan farmer and social entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Green Dreams Ltd and Green Dreams Tech Ltd, focused on creating solutions for smallholder farmers in Africa to give them sustainable productivity and incomes. I am especially committed to educating, encouraging and enabling young people to engage in agriculture and build a better Africa from the ground up.

Over the years of my involvement in agriculture in the organic industry in Kenya, it became very apparent to me that one of the biggest problems facing farmers was lack of information on just about every part of the agricultural value chain. To develop the supply chain for my own growing organic business, I had  to find a way of teaching farmers about organic production methods. I got involved with the magazine The Organic Farmer, where I began to answer farmers' queries, which led to me getting involved with the Biovision Foundation in the development of their infonet website. This is now an incredible website offering verified agricultural information targeted at smallholder producers.

In 2010, in a quest to increase the outreach of information, I explored ways of disseminating info over mobile phones. Competitive mobile phone operator wars had resulted in a sudden drop in both user charges as well as device prices, which spurred a sudden massive growth in mobile phone use across Kenya.

My original plan was to develop a voice-based agricultural platform and whilst I was working on this, I was encouraged to enter it into the first Apps4Africa competition. The technology involved was completely foreign to me at the time and rather than rush to complete what I felt was a three year project to cover information on all areas of agriculture, I decided to enter a small component of the product, the cow calendar that I called iCow, which was made possible with help from the Indigo Trust, USAID and support through GALVmed, which receives UK aid and funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

iCow creates a conversation between government, agricultural stakeholders and farmers. The various features of the iCow platform offer countless opportunities above and beyond the increased milk yields and delivery of services by government. These include: early warning systems on crop and livestock diseases; essential data on productivity; or quality assurance of suppliers such as artificial inseminators by digital tracking their performance.

Crowd map: the iCow platform allows farmers to find agricultural services, dealers and much more. Picture: iCow website

The role of mobile and web technology in changing lives and opening up governments

Mobile and web technology have accelerated our access to information and services which is all empowering. iCow is enabling farmers to increase their milk yields and livestock numbers as well as making government agricultural  suppliers accessible to farmers across the country. It has enabled government to engage and learn from the farming sector more cost effectively, and enabled emerging country populations to leapfrog forward in critical areas of development which contribute to overall economic productivity.

Mobile money has changed the playing field in the financial sector and enabled citizens to take a bigger role in developing the economy than ever before. Mobile education, agriculture and health are just beginning to happen.

Mobile and web technology are enabling us to expand and spread knowledge in all areas - education, agriculture, health, governance - across an entire nation, quickly. The challenge is for the development tools, agencies and services to keep up with these changes. For example, farmers now need access to capital to increase their productivity based on the data they can access. The old ways of accessing finance do not work in the agricultural arena anymore. The changes in technology have brought many opportunities and new thinking and services are emerging. More are needed still.

Opportunities

My advice to donors would be for them to encourage governments to understand the changes taking place, embrace them, and enable them to grow, especially mobile money. Gvernments must also embrace advice from a younger savvier generation, and be prepared to take off their suits and get into jeans and gumboots if they want to survive the avalanche of change that has started. We also need to develop our systems to incorporate marginalised communities as it's vital that everyone can access devices and networks and information.

I believe as connectivity expands and becomes more affordable we will see increased growth across the African continent in unpredictable and exciting new ways. In particular, governments will be expected to be more accountable to citizens due to the speed at which these changes and developments are taking place. Governments are going to have to keep up and open up. Africa is on the verge of happening.

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

Open Up!, a conference hosted by the UK Government and Omidyar Network, will help governments use technology to open up and enable millions of citizens across the world to hold decision makers to account and change lives. Join in at www.openup12.org and #OpenUp12.

However, even at the first web conference in 1994, it was clear that a rather complex and potentially more profound frustration (and opportunity) existed when you looked at data rather than documents. Data, after all, is stuff machines can handle, and while the web of documents might have seemed intoxicating to early web 'surfers', the lure of doing the same thing to the data was that we could create a world in which it would be programs - not just people - that would enjoy the data.  
 
For data, as for documents, the value of any part of the web is increased by the amount of other stuff out there. For documents it is the ability to follow links, but for open data it is the ability to also interconnect and join, to summarise and compare, to monitor, extrapolate, to infer. 

The tip of the iceberg
We have seen some of the power and acceleration which happens when governments such as the UK and US have put data on the web. But this is the tip of the iceberg. The information about spending, agriculture, health and education that lies behind locked databases could be used to dramatically improve people's lives. When governments begin to release data openly on the web, the growing movement of hackers and activists and even internal government agencies and corporations can begin to use the previously unconnected and undissected numbers, images and graphs to create new ways for you to access valuable new information. 

Take the example of the UK aid funded Southern Africa Regional Programme on Access to Medicines and Diagnostics (SARPAM). This is an organisation that painstakingly worked with insiders in health ministries and local health professionals to collect and publish public data on the price and availability of medicines. They revealed that some governments were being charged enormously higher rates - up to 25 times more - for the same medicines. The findings enabled governments to put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to reduce the prices.

Imagine how quickly impacts such as these would multiply if governments were to openly publish this data, not just about the cost of medicine, but also about student attendance rates or crop productivity compared to use of pesticides. Scientific data could help researchers to find new drugs, given genomics and the biology of individuals, and the massive amount of data needed to understand and combat climate change would be available to all who work on it.

The benefit of open data is different but also very important in developing countries. For example, Ghana's government in collaboration with the Web Foundation, is well on its way to creating a portal for the release of open, accessible public data. The Ghana Open Data Initiative (GODI) just held Ghana’s first data bootcamp, bringing together journalists and developers to find, extract and analyse public data to tell better informed news stories.

These developments are encouraging, but the simple message to governments around the world must be consistent and forceful: raw data, now! Opening up data is fundamentally about more efficient use of resources and improving service delivery for citizens. The effects of that are far reaching:  innovation, transparency, accountability, better governance and economic growth.

I'm interested to see the results of the Open Data Research network, which is bringing together researchers from the global south to explore the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries, and to better understand how it is impacting upon decision making and implementation. The network is being led by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the World Wide Web Foundation, an organisation I founded to keep the Web free (as in freedom) and open, and to help to bring it within the reach of all.
 

The Web Index: A decision making tool to understand the web's growth, utility and impact on people and nations.

The Web Foundation is leading the charge on other fronts as well. In September, we launched The Web Index, a decision making tool for policymakers and others to understand the web's growth, utility and impact on people and nations. It covers 61 countries, incorporating indicators that assess the political, economic and social impact of the web, and includes a subset of indicators that show openness on the web. It includes a component about open data, and of course the index itself is available as open data.
 
I commend the leadership and commitment of the UK in the open data effort. I was honoured to be asked by former PM Gordon Brown to kick-start the open data movement in the UK. PM David Cameron has continued to put open data at the heart of his agenda and has been a key supporter of the new Open Data Institute (ODI). I expect the Open Up! event taking place in London next week will be a great meeting place for those interested, a window onto the state of the art, and a place to set new directions for the future.

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Please note, this is a guest blog. Views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of DFID or have the support of the British Government.

Open Up!, a conference hosted by the UK Government and Omidyar Network in association with Wired Magazine, will help governments use technology to open up and enable millions of citizens across the world to hold decision makers to account and change lives. Join in at www.openup12.org and #OpenUp12.