More than 75% of Uganda’s population is under 30. Many are jobless, and according to the country’s population and housing census, 16% are single mothers. Applying this to Uganda’s 40 million people today means that there are 6.5 million single mothers. On top of that, our society makes it difficult for women to find sustainable employment as the unemployment rate is four times that of men.
My mother is also a single mother. I grew up in one of Jinja’s rural slums, and when it rained, plastic trash caused the water to flood into water channels and roadside trenches. I was forced to miss my classes, and also my mother didn’t have enough money to pay for education. That’s why I dropped out of school at 19. I needed to find a way to support myself and decided to join the Social Innovation Academy, where I crossed paths with others who shared the dream of solving Uganda’s plastic waste problem. At 20, I joined Kimuli Fashionability, an organization that collects and converts plastic waste into waterproof, durable, and beautiful accessories like shopping bags.
From this experience, I started to focus on trash and fashion. The next year I formed Tusobola Women (currently Plastrix Pack), an organization to help create employment opportunities for single mothers. We source plastic waste from landfills and collection points around Kampala, cut it according to our customer’s design, and send it to tailors to create fashionable accessories. Finally, the supervisor makes sure it is delivered in the best quality possible.
At first, we struggled with fundraising and production flow, but it showed us that passion is the fuel and the driving engine. Now my dream is to train 600 single mothers so they can become community trainers and help reduce plastic waste.
Uganda 