MAKING CHARCOAL BRIQUETTES FROM WASTE

   I'm Musimenta Godwin a male aged 34 and Ugandan by nationality. I'm currently the Director and Founder of a local community Based Organisation Called BATWA DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATION (BDO) located in Kabale district in south -western Uganda. I founded this Organisation in 2013 and its aim  is to improve the lives of the marginalised classes of people so that they can live on equal footing with other Ugandans.

I have over ten years of experience in non-profit leadership with a focus on youth and women empowerment, defending indigenous minority rights of the pygmies (Batwa), human rights advocacy democracy and Good Governance, education, healthcare, and community development. I'm a social entrepreneur  & human rights activist  and a distinguished alumnus of the EAST AFRICAN LEDERSHIP CENTER  NAIROBI.

In addition my other achievements include advocating for the respect of the human rights of the indigenous Batwa communities by helping them access fair justice.

  CHARCOAL BRIQUETTE MAKING /PRODUCTION FROM WASTES (GARBAGE) is the project am proposing. This project is trying to address two social pressing issues or  problems affecting mankind .House hold Poverty and Unemployment are the first challenges that our work is addressing. Many people in our community have no income and this is because most of them don't have skills to create jobs for themselves as such, they are extremely poor and live under the poverty line to the extent that most of the people are not sure of the next meal .

To address the problem, we came up with an INNOVATIVE SOLUTION of training the Youths and the Women in CHARCOAL BRIQUETTE MAKING TECHNOLOGY from WASTES /GARBAGE. This has increased house hold income since trained people in Kabale and the rural areas are now able to make charcoal briquettes from rubbish and agricultural wastes which are later sold  to hotels.

My initiative is tackling 2-three most pressing issues in our community.

The first one is unemployment. While the national unemployment rate stands at 3.5 per cent that of the youth is a whopping 32.2 per cent and higher for degree holders - 36 per cent. This worrying figures are, however, not conclusive as the government department in charge of labour does not have current aggregate figures on unemployment and underemployment. Many youths graduate and fail to get jobs and to tackle this challenge, we are empowering youths with skills like for our case in training them to get skills in making charcoal briquettes from wastes so as to be able to create jobs for themselves and earn a living.

House hold Poverty is also another challenge that our project tackle. Many people have no income and this means that by being able to make charcoal briquettes which have a high demand, the producers will be able to sell these briquettes and be able to get money and increase their incomes at house hold level. This indirectly solves the challenge of hunger, lack of school fees for by parents etc.

   I'm currently involved in UNIQUE & INNOVATIVE project /business that I launched last year in June 2019 .This Project is called "CHARCOAL BRIQUETTE MAKING /PRODUCTION FROM WASTES (GARBAGE).As the Executive Director & Founder, I initiated this ground breaking initiative last year and currently the initiative is empowering youths and other marginalised peoples in our area by equipping them with knowledge and skills in charcoal briquettes production from wastes. Under this initiative, youths and women are being trained in producing charcoal briquettes from wastes like banana peelings and other agricultural wastes. This is the unique initiative  completely leveraging potential for the youths as widely as possible for job creation and even highlight their potential as a solution to fostering prosperous & peaceful societies and reducing house hold poverty due to increase in their incomes. Over 250 youths and other marginalised people have been trained in producing charcoal briquettes from the wastes and many of these people have started small medium enterprises selling charcoal briquettes.

Particularly, this is a hands-on training program is aimed at imparting hands-on skills in producing charcoal briquettes from locally generated materials like banana wastes, dry leaves, grass, charcoal dust, fruit dry leaves among other agricultural wastes.

Our target beneficiaries are strictly youths and young women who are vulnerable and are located in Kabale and Rubanda Districts in South Western-Uganda .We are also serving the other type of people who are called the Indigenous minority and marginalise classes of People called the Pygmies and they are traditionally left out in all spheres of life. People are poor with no hope for tomorrow and we therefore want to transform their lives .We believe in some saying “INSTEAD OF GIVING SOME ONE A FISH EVERY DAY, TEACH HIM HOW TO FISH". This motivates us that by empowering someone with a skill, then he or she will be able to stand for himself in future than giving him or her money every day which he can consume once.

By equipping them with skills , the potential of the traditionally neglected(left) people have been leveraged  for job creation.

These groups of people are based in both rural and urban areas. These people are usually involved in project implementation plans. With this project, the neglected people have been able to get jobs and their incomes have improved poverty alleviation at house hold level.

 First and foremost, the project is about equipping skills to the people who are traditionally left behind in our local community. We are targeting people who are deliberately left behind and these people include the indigenous minority who are not considered human beings here in Uganda .Therefore by empowering  such people with skills like in our case of making charcoal briquettes from wastes, then we are leveraging their potential for job creation since such people can easily become self-employed and also earn a living .This is totally related to the selected dimension of elevating opportunities for people left behind traditionally.

I was born in 1986 and immediately when I clocked 12 years of age ,my parents died in a fatal accident from the village back to Kabale town where we were living and thus leaving us behind as total orphans in a single room .This made us to start living with our maternal aunt who was also a low income earner in the town dealing in street vending .Our aunt used to suffer for us since she had no other work to do .I managed to go to school since I got a sponsor from Canada and I reached to a University in Kampala where I completed my studies in 2009. By this time, I came to know a boy who introduced me about Charcoal briquette making in one of the Kampala suburbs and I decided to go back to Kabale and also train my community members including my aunt.

In 2019, I was invited by the African Union to participate in the regional consultation meeting in the role of youth in peace building and security .While 

The specific problems which am addressing are high levels of house hold poverty as well as unemployment. These two problems are so important to because the root cause of all evils in our community is poverty. Because people are poor, they fail to afford basic needs of life and as such you find families with malnourished children due to poor feeding .This house hold poverty has also led to moral decadency whereby for example young girls resort to prostitution as one way of earning some money for their survival. Recently, a certain man in my local community committed suicide after failing to provide 1000 Ugandan shillings to his family for salt. This made me so unhappy and it motivates me to fight household poverty .

I have grown up in this area and these populations are my immediate neighbours and I know their problems very well. I have a strong personal connection to this community and its members and have worked with them before and held meetings with them at a village level which is why I know their demands and the possible solutions for their problems.

I have the best skills and  strong background in community development projects  with vast experiences that uniquely position me to deliver the project and solve the pressing social problems .

For example as the former  field officer of Kigezi Women in Development (KWID)- a local NGO in Kabale, I  registered great achievements like Project beneficiaries' selection and socio-economic assessment; Over 250 Project beneficiaries were selected by me and most for these are the indigenous ethnic minority groups of People called the Batwa or the Pygmies who live near Echuya Forest in South Western Uganda. These Pygmies are the most hostile People and many employees of this Organisation feared to approach these Batwa but for me my home is near these Batwa much as am not an indigenous man but I used to hobnob with these BATWA who could come to our homes looking for casual labour and I befriended them even before starting to work with BDO and as a result , when I started working with this NGO whose target beneficiaries are the Batwa whom I had befriended before ,it became easy to convince them and to even approach them to know their problems and be supported by the project which made the number of the Project beneficiaries to increase and am now proud that the Batwa or pygmies whom other staff had feared are now the biggest number of the Project beneficiaries and this is a great achievement. 

In June 2019, I approached the Kabale Municipal Council requesting that we be allowed to collect wastes or rubbish since it the this wastes that we make charcoal briquettes from .The council deliberately refused and informed me that I should pay for the wastes yet for my case, I had thought that by collecting rubbish, I will be indirectly helping to remove rubbish in the town .This almost made me to quit the project since I had no money to pay for the wastes. I continued engaging the authorities to allow us collect wastes but they continued to refuse. This never made me to give up my dream of making charcoal briquettes from wastes.

I persevered and this time, I requested to prepare a document which was presented in the council meeting .I connived with the citizens who knew how important the project could be and we even contacted the media and environmental activists and the whole society had to peacefully move to the council and demand the authorities to allow us use the wastes dumped everywhere .The council after realising that the project is badly needed by the whole society, it allowed us due to the public pressure.

  I have always exemplified responsible leadership 

First and foremost, he is has practiced empathy in his leadership style. I have always shown my ability to understand and share the feelings of another. For example, there is a time when some of the corrupt organisation's staff  wanted to neglect the rightful beneficiaries and replace them with the ones who are not fit. In this case, there are people called the pygmies and these are the most marginalised classes of people who needed support .The floods had hit our area and his community based Organisation was at the ground distributing relief but when they reached in the villages, they wanted to discriminate these pygmies because they are the most marginalised ,these pygmies contacted my office and I responded immediately and instead suspended these staff that were discriminating these pygmies  and later resolved that pygmies should instead receive much aid and relief than other local people since the pygmies are the most marginalised in Uganda. In me, the community saw a responsible leader with empathy and who fights against discrimination in the society which is not a common character among other leaders in our local community.