Fatima Women Investment

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Fatima Women Investment

Zimbabwe
Project Stage:
Scaling
Budget: 
$1,000 - $10,000
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Project Summary
Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

For the past several years, Fatima Shoriwa, the first Zimbabwean woman to work as a trained carpenter and welder, has operated a successful business where she has trained several other women who continued to work with her. Drawing on that experience, she is now establishing a training center for women and an associated production facility with the ambitious aim of transforming traditional attitudes toward women and giving the women themselves new skills and opportunities.

About Project

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

Fatima is working to change prevailing perceptions of women and their societal roles in rural Zimbabwe, and to help the women themselves gain opportunities and rights that have long been denied. From her own experience, she is certain that the surest and quickest way to liberate women from attitudes and circumstances that tightly circumscribe their control over their own lives is to help them learn trades that, until now, have been the exclusive province of men. With such skills, she confidently predicts, rural women will achieve economic independence, and, with that newfound freedom, they will assume new roles in society and gain access to new options in education, marriage, child rearing, and other important aspects of their lives.Fatima is translating those convictions into concrete action by organizing a women's training center and an associated production unit in a rural area. The training center will equip Zimbabwean women from rural communities with practical skills in carpentry, welding, and similar fields. The production unit will help them hone their newly acquired skills, expose them to the benefits of working as a group, and generate income that will help make the center self-sustaining.