We are sitting in dappled shade amid rows of thriving vegetables. Eliaseni’s smile is warm and open. Save the Rain’s Farm is her happy place. She is 55 and the mother of nine, seven of whom are still living. They have all left home except for the youngest.
The hard years of struggling to make ends meet are behind Eliaseni.
She has always been the family’s sole provider. Her husband has never worked. It fell to her to feed, clothe and educate the children. “He’s just another empty plate at the table,” she says wryly.
She was stretched so thin that when she applied to build tanks with our team, Joseph was worried. Normally, he perceives women’s strength when they can’t see it themselves, but Eliaseni had to convince him rather than the other way around. Her tenacity persuaded him, and everything began to change.
Each tank she constructed built her strength and self-belief. Scarcity turned to sufficiency, and she saved enough to build a house. When we started our farm, she was among the women who cleared the land and planted our first crops.
Now, it’s her whole job.
We look around at all they have manifested. The farm sends food to our building teams. It supplies seeds and starts for all our greenhouses. The women take vegetables home to their families, and Eiaseni teaches her neighbors the art of organic farming.
Once, she struggled to feed her family. Now, she feeds a whole workforce every day. The work feeds her, too. As a mother, a wife, a woman, she continuously poured energy into others. Here, the earth receives her energy and gives it back a hundredfold.
When you create the conditions for women to tap into their own potential, you unleash their capacity as change-makers and agents of transformation. Each act thereafter creates a ripple that extends the benefits infinitely outward for people and planet alike.
This Mother’s Day, we celebrate the incredible women of Save the Rain, like Eliaseni, who embody resilience, strength, and transformation. From a struggling provider to a thriving farmer, she—and mothers like her—show us the power of nurturing both families and communities.
We honor all women who nurture and care, recognizing that motherhood takes many beautiful forms.
