The First Lady initiated several women empowerment projects in partnership with both public and private players benefiting thousands of women. The projects focused on gender equality and women empowerment to strengthen girl’s and women’s economic and educational opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, enterprises, and employability.
• Engaging spouses of traditional leaders as agents of change and empowerment to influence other women under their jurisdiction to engage in self-help projects. Each spouse received two productive goats to start a nationwide goat rearing project.
• Empowerment of women through ownership of livestock and handcrafts; some of the beneficiaries have been able to purchase their own residential stands.
• The establishment of women’s banks in all constituencies in the Midlands Province.
• Promoting women in cross border trading as a means of self-sustenance.
• 50 orphaned young women (aged 20-25 years) went through training and were assisted to secure employment in male-dominated trades
such as plumbing and motor mechanics.
• Manufacturing of reusable sanitary pads under the brand name MazuvaPads, in partnership with a local entrepreneur and the Angel of Hope Foundation. The project is two-pronged, first, it is availing affordable sanitary ware to women and girls and secondly it is empowering women through gainful employment as resource persons for the business.
• Support for 40 women from marginalised communities to access financial services and related training for a castor bean production
project. The women have a total of 20 hectares of land that has been utilised for producing Castor beans.
• Skills training for 50 underprivileged young women made possible through the First Lady’s flagship “Young Women in Tourism Entrepreneurship” Program. These young women have now been absorbed into the tourism sector. This was in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Tourism Association and the National Parks.
• Hosted a series of workshops for widows & orphans on Inheritance and Property Rights and Deceased Estates.
• 100 secondary school girls from different communities in all the country’s 10 provinces benefitting from Her Excellency the First Lady, Amai Auxillia Mnangagwa’s scholarship programme.
