Environmental Action

Our local partner, Abiodes, supports young people to increase their income thanks to sustainable agriculture and chemical-free products. Through training sessions, the young farmers learn how to grow vegetables and breed chickens without the use of chemicals. Mozambique is particularly hard hit by climate change with extreme weather events, frequent droughts, flooding and cyclones having a devastating impact on the population of a country that is not prepared.

Young people participating in Abiodes are grateful for the support and training. “Abiodes helped me a lot”, says Stelio, “especially in creating a work plan and preparing my field with natural fertilizer.”  His three assistants are rewarded in kind with a section of the field to grow and sell their own vegetables. Restaurants are often the only customers willing to pay a higher price for healthy vegetables, but unfortunately, they were closed for a long time due to the pandemic. Stelio’s dream is to have even more employees and to pay them a wage. He wants to convince as many people as possible in Mozambique to focus on sustainable agriculture.

Stelio Gulele proudly stands in his field outside the Mozambique capital of Maputo holding the results of hard work that he and his three employees have grown. | ©Tdh_Basel

©Tdh

Young people from Livingstone in Zambia face an ongoing problem shared with millions of people from impoverished communities around the world: smelly, smoky mountains of waste that pile up on the streets. Unfortunately, many families cannot afford the cost of rubbish collection services. Instead, they burn the waste and then toxic smoke fogs up residential areas and important raw materials such as glass, plastic and paper are destroyed instead of being recycled.

With our support, 12 young people work to find a solution via Trash4 Cash. The initiative involves collecting plastic and paper rubbish, which creates jobs and reduces the amount of waste. The recyclables are pressed into bales and sold to wholesalers where payments are based on weight.

After being in operation for only 6 months, Trash4Cash collects 20 percent of Livingstone’s plastic and paper waste and creates an income for 62 young people and women.