14 DAY TRIAL // An American teacher plans to fight the alarming effects of poverty and AIDS in Zambia, relying on recycled plastic bags. After meeting local people from the Ng’ombe community, severely affected by this disease, Linda Wilkinson has decided to change the fate of widows, orphans and hundreds of people who are currently unemployed.
She has launched the Chikumbuso project, counting on the help of women eager to receive extra financial support that would allow them to put food on the table on a daily basis, Earth911 reports.
Wilkinson thought about several methods of generating income and finally decided that using recycled bags to create a fantastic line of fashionable purses represents the most suitable option.
At first, she started working with 7 widows, but in time the number of participants grew to 73. They have all joined efforts to design purses of all colors, shapes and sizes, commercialized every day on an international scale.
The benefits are now noticeable, since half of the price of a bag goes to its needy manufacturer as soon as the item is purchased by a client.
Another 15% of the profit is transformed into “forced savings” meaning that these women will obtain a monthly salary allowing them to survive.
Other 15% go to Co-Op Bank that can finance initiatives meant to boost local communities, give loans and cover the teachers' salaries.
The charitable program provides even more advantages. Apart from taking care of 73 widows, 20 grandmothers and their affected families, it encourages them to improve their education while learning new things about tailoring and cooking, at the Chikumbuso Community Center. Moreover, the entire project helped build a new school that now shelters more than 350 students.
“On a daily basis, the community center is filled with many widows, orphans and grandmothers who have found community and a hope for their future. Here behind the walls of the center, they find peace from a life so consumed with the struggle of just getting by daily,” declares Linda Wilkinson, the initiator of this charitable action.
Even nowadays, AIDS still represents a major problem for most of the developing countries. The Chikumbuso Women and Orphans’ Project reveals that 15% of the Zambian population is suffering from this deadly disease.
The percentage of people indirectly affected is much more significant if we take into consideration that thousands of widows and 800,000 orphans with no sources of income are left on their own every year.
All in all, she proves that charity can go hand in hand with recycling operation, changing the lives of poor people currently affected by AIDS.