Awra Amba RJ 300612 EN - Contacter un comité local d'Attac

4. Social organisation
We describe here the main aspects of the Awra Amba community: the structures of the community,
its economic activities, then its social relationships, through gender equality, equality in work, what
deals with family (marriage, divorce, and family household building), the specific and original
position of children, the solidarity with the weakest, the funeral, and finally the management modes
of the conflicts internal within the community.
This is essentially the social capital of the community: a set of values, behaviours and modes of
social organisation of which that capital is composed, which play a key role in the successful
development of Awra Amba (Ya08/136).
4.1. Institutions
Awra Amba is organised into two structures (Yi07/47; Jo10b/5):
- The community, which contains especially all inhabitants of the village, who share values and a
life style. It was created in 1972. This community is in fact split into those who live in Awra
Amba and who really follow the common rules (439 persons at the beginning of 2011), and
external members living elsewhere (Bahar Dar, Addis Ababa etc) who participate to one or two
meetings with local members, and who form a sort of supporting and advising network. Zumra
considers all those who share the Awra Amba values can be members of the community,
irrespective of where they live.
- The cooperative or union, founded in 1986 by an original core group of 19 people and which
always increased to reach 143 adult members in 2010 (81 women and 62 men, i.e. with their
children 325 people). It is a work and life collective, within the community. 87 community
members are therefore not members of the cooperative in 2010; among them, adults work
independently, usually weaving at home. We can assess the number of these adults to more than
thirty according to figures of Table 1 and age distribution of Figure 3. The cooperative did not
accept any new member in 2010 due to the lack of work opportunity.
According to the chief guide interviewed by Yi07/47, to be member of the community does not
allow to participate in the community tasks, to share any benefit of the community or to have access
to all cooperative services; only the cooperative members are really organised, as confirmed by
Crespo (2012). What about the community members living in Awra Amba and who do not belong to
the cooperative, in terms of participation to local tasks, which many committees described below
deal with: are they excluded from any community decision? Their situation is not clear (Question 17
in Annex).
Like any association, the cooperative comprises a general assembly of the membership, an executive
management, a secretariat and an auditing section (article 11 of the 1999 Communal Statute)
(Me09/40).
The most important decisions – the annual income distribution, the planning and expansion of
economic activities, the election of committees – are debated and voted by adults over the age of 18
in general assemblies (At05/60): these general strategic assemblies are held once a year (At05/60;
Ya08/115; Jo10b/9), or about four times a year as necessary according to Crespo (2012), whereas it
seems that less important general assemblies – also so-called development days – are held once a
week (At05/60) (Question 18 in Annex). These weekly development days are held on Tuesday under
a big tree in the village centre, each participant spinning at the same time (Picture 5). This choice of
Tuesday and the habit of spinning cotton started when Zumra's former wife lost her daughter: the
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