Only 8% of Uganda is under forest cover, and if nothing is done, even that little will be gone in a few years, says Brian Kakembu.
With 3 million trees cut a year for fuel, it is a dire situation, says Brian of Eco-rehab Africa, the non-governmental arm of Clean Energy company.
Brian is among the current batch of trainees from Africa at the Kanthari Institute for Social Leadership, and a driver of change in the vast and developing continent.
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Spearheading change from within the community, Eco-rehab trains youth and women in farming communities to transform waste from agriculture output, 43 million tonnes annually, to briquettes as a substitute for the trees cut down. Besides households, they are targeting schools, universities, prisons and other such institutions. Eco-rehab has developed some prototypes of a stove that uses briquettes, for households and institutions. These are not only eco-friendly as the briquettes do not produce smoke, but also cut costs by 35% and reduce cooking time by 50%. This is the immediate and perfect solution for switching over from bio-fuels for Uganda, he says.
Selassie Tay from Ghana was born to a single mother who sold vegetables. All his life, he felt she could have led a life of more dignity. When prodded, she told him she did not have any opportunities and he realised that gender inequality was holding women back. So, he founded the Tongu Youth Agenda for Development focussing on entreprenuership, education and micro- finance for youth, particularly young women. Over time, he realised that fashion designing and tailoring courses were not helping break gender stereotypes and more needed to be done, and his organisation evolved into Eyata.
With Eyata he wants to provide technical training in carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and electrical installation to women in the age group of 18 to 35. He also wants to provide business management and entrepreneurship training to them, and access to micro-finance for setting up a sustainable enterprise.
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Breaking gender sterotypes is also what Cavin Odera from Kenya is doing. Cavin who belongs to a fishing family found that women were marginalised from childhood, leading to high illiteracy and unemployment. Worse, the women were forced to sell their bodies to buy fish from local vendors, leading to high rates of HIV/AIDS.
Cavin lost his mother and sister to the dreaded disease. So he founded Wa-Wa, which means fisherwoman in Swahili, to train women in activities such as fishing, boat-building, and fish-farming as well as intervening in areas of sexual reproductive health and HIV.
Working in Homa-bay county, west of Nairobi, he knew he needed community support to bring about any lasting change. So, he reached out to women who wanted to bring out a change in their lives and got them interested. He also spoke to the people, the school, the community clinic to ensure community involvement.