In a rustic the place AIDS/HIV charges are hovering and most younger ladies don’t have any different however prostitution, there may be one mom attempting to struggle that pattern. Pauline Samata, referred to as the “Mom of Bamboo,” has made it her mission in life to lift consciousness of the marvels of bamboo and to coach ladies to make bamboo merchandise as a way of escaping poverty.
INBAR, with the assistance of a grant from IFAD, launched into the Livelihood and Financial Improvement Programme in 2001 with the aim of making sustainable rural livelihoods and enterprises by utilizing bamboo and rattan merchandise. INBAR goals to empower rural communities by displaying them manufacturing methods and to concentrate on the harvesting and cultivating of the bamboo to ensure native assets are utilized in a sustainable manner. The thought of utilizing bamboo to assist international locations escape poverty is rising in reputation.
And Samata has taken benefit of this program eagerly. She was a part of a south-south change through which she visited China and the Philippines to find the huge potential of bamboo. She realized to construct bamboo homes, bamboo furnishings and bamboo scarves. And he or she realized that she may save time, vitality and the encircling forests by changing her firewood with bamboo charcoal. Most significantly, she realized that the ladies of her nation may very well be integral within the manufacturing of bamboo merchandise and will work their manner out of poverty.
“I didn’t know the marvels of this plant, till the day IFAD and INBAR despatched me to China and the Philippines for coaching,” says Samata. “That is why I need everybody to know the potential of bamboo, and the numerous issues that they will do with this plant. Moms want cash to feed their kids, however as a result of their alternative of employment is proscribed they find yourself falling into the prostitution entice.”
Samata wasted no time upon her return. She rapidly fashioned the Mbeya Bamboo Ladies’s Group and arranged coaching programs for the ladies of her group. Her aim is to maintain her fellow ladies from falling prey to prostitution and save them from the HIV/AIDS pandemic of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Samata’s coaching programs are free however there may be one situation: the ladies should keep together with her locally for at the least six months. Thus far she has skilled over 60 ladies to work with bamboo. Whereas the ladies, who’ve had little entry to training, reside in her group, she additionally teaches them primary expertise corresponding to counting and the way to write their names.
And Samata’s imaginative and prescient continues to develop. She is instructing ladies the way to assemble their very own bamboo homes in order that they escape the entice of renting and have a house of their very own. She has began to construct a big, built-in workshop and store on her land in Mbeya. She is exploring potential new markets for her merchandise and has recognized Zambia, Malawi, Kenya and Uganda as probably viable. Someday, she desires to personal extra to plant extra bamboo.
Pauline Samata – the mom of bamboo – is contributing to decreasing poverty in her beloved nation. Due to her efforts and people of others, right this moment virtually each family within the United Republic of Tanzania makes use of a bamboo product and lots of younger women and girls earn a decent residing by creating objects product of bamboo.
Samata’s new slogan is: Sure, we will! And certainly, they will!
