Three women’s poultry projects: Waka Simba, Simbarashe and Kanyangala, all of whom provide affordable broilers, free range chickens and eggs to the local community.
Chic’s for Chicks was a brilliant concept dreamed up by Cherri Briggs the owner of Explore Inc. and Gloria Steinem one of the co-founders of Waka Simba, the first woman-run project in the area. Women who visit the area can support local village women in their efforts to become more economically self sufficient by funding small women’s co-ops who are interested in raising poultry. This project has proven to be highly successful and DIA now has 3 poultry projects in 3 different areas. All these projects supply eggs to their villages providing a very necessary and affordable protein option, as well as broilers, free range hens and quails. Two projects now have their own incubators which eliminates the need to import eggs from far away. The idea has always been to make these projects profitable, and the best way to do that is to cut down inventory costs and feed costs. Due to the continued success of the projects all are slowly expanding and it is DIA’s intent to eventually have all feed grown and processed on site organically and incubate all eggs locally thus cutting out the exorbitant costs of purchasing chics outside the area.