Zambezi Exchange Services Limited

We would use the Elevate Prize funding and support to start (aside our usual business with rural communities) a project on Menstral Hygiene Management particularly for the school going young girls in rural communities. This is one critical area in the rural communities that has not received much assistance either from the Zambian government or the private sector and the lack thereof is responsible for these young girls dropping out of school at tender ages due to lack of what to properly use in this regard when that time of the month comes. We hope with this funding from Elevate Prize, to initially provide sanitary towels and later to start locally producing these by engaging local women and girls to start making within their rural communities as a way of empowering them economically. Currently, due to the lack of proper clean sanitary towels leads these women and girls in rural communities within Zambia to resort to using dirty old-cloth and other unpleasant materials which are of no good hygienic standards thereby making these women and girls easily susceptible to urinary track infections, which lead to other problems in their reproductive health systems when they remain untreated for a long time. 

Zambezi Exchange Services is an incorporated company in Zambia, with a vision of helping to improve the economic-welfare of rural small scale farmers in Zambia by assisting them to directly access urban markets for the sell of their agro-produce. For a long time now, middlemen or agents have taken advantage of these rural farmers by buying their agro-produce at half the prevailing price in urban markets, thereby greatly disadvantaging them in spite of their hard labour in producing either livestock (cattle and goats), cash crops or vegetables. We feel therefore that by eliminating these agents and helping these rural farmers to sell directly to urban markets, their income will increase tremendously thereby encourage them to plant more in order to earn more, reducing current high levels of poverty within the rural communities in the end.

These rural small scale farmers are our suppliers for most of the urban markets in various towns in Zambia but are not properly rewarded for their hard labour. We started with those rural places very close to Lusaka our capital city of Zambia due to limited finances but with a view to scale up to other rural as well as urban towns of Zambia. 

Our organisation, as already indicated, works with the rural small scale farmers in assisting them have direct access to urban markets in order for them to earn more for their agro-produce. Most of these farmers are women and young ladies who are parents to school-going girls facing the need to improve their menstrual hygiene managment (MHM) especially in these rural communities they live. The poor way of MHM among the said girls is one of the main reason for their absentia from school leading to dropping out of school. A UNESCO's study-(https://bmcpublichealth.biomed...) in some-districts in Zambia stated that, "In Zambia, however, this potential is cut short with girls dropping out or not attending school, which is reflected in the low female literacy levels of approximately 58%. About 44% of girls are reported to drop out of school before completing their secondary education. One reason for this interruption could be inadequate provision for MHM that does not allow all girls to attend school with dignity and comfort during their menstrual period." We strongly feel that for a holistic economic-welfare to be achieved for these farmers, MHM among their children should be addressed too hence our soliciting for funding to SOLVE.

A new approach that our organisation has envisaged is one that is sustainable in that while we work on improving the economic status of these rural farmers where the women make-up the majority, we want their improvement to be sustainable by also ensuring that children especially the girl-child being educated is part of our organisational service to rural communities in Zambia. This will be a first in Zambia as no other organisation is doing this among rural communities especially in the area of menstrual hygiene management among school-going girls. The disruptive aspect is that our organisation not only wants to initially supply sanitary towels for use in this regard but empower local co-operatives of rural women and girls by empowering them with skills to sew these sanitary towels which they will distribute and sell within their local and neighbouring communities at affordable prices. A woman trained with such life skills will have them for the rest of her life which is sustainable unlike only relying on donations of sanitary towels. As menstrual hygiene management also is dependent on clean water supply, with funding our organisation intends to sink boreholes to help improve water supply within these local rural communities. 

Our organisation has already engaged the Ministry of Agriculture at District level in the districts of rural areas we visit so that we work together with their Agricultural Assistants (VA) stationed in those particular camps they manage. Each VA is assigned a Camp comprising all rural farmers within it and there is a natural loyalty to each VA from the farmers under him/her hence us being introduced to these farmers by the respective VAs assures some good level of instant trust that we are a credible organisation and these farmers can do-business with us.

Our organisation is making impact because we have concerned ourselves with some of the very pertinent issues that affect life in the remote areas of Zambia and Africa in general, which are; extreme poor standards of menstrual hygiene management (MHM) and the inability of rural small scale farmers to access urban markets for their maximisation of profits. For the former issue and our reason for applying for the Elevate Prize, we are already engaging local traditional leadership as well as women co-operative groups on how best we can implement the same and the sensitization/education thereof for change of mind-set of the local women/girls on MHM related-issues.