Women need to support each other

As part of encouraging those making a difference in their communities, East London activist Babalwa Mbuku hosted a community builders women’s empowerment session at GroundX on Saturday.

Mbuku said the purpose of the gathering was to share ideas among do-gooders.

“Some of the programmes they are involved in need funding but they do not know how [to go about getting it].

“[They] sometimes don’t know where to get funds. It happens that one has a great concept but does not get funding because of minor mistakes when submitting documents,” she said.

Mbuku, who is popularly known for supplying sanitary towels to young girls from disadvantaged communities through her brand, Ntombam, said women could achieve more if they worked together.

“I am a community builder, I have a passion for helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“The purpose of the gathering is to share ideas with other people who have the same vision as myself.

“This thing of keeping information to yourself and not sharing it, is not OK.

“I also want to break that spirit of being jealous of someone doing great things for their communities,” she said.

Mbuku said women needed to support each other to do more in their communities.

“Some of the people here have just started doing community work, but their projects need funding. We shared ideas on how to put together a concept document and which doors to knock on,” she said.

She said government could not do everything on its own.

“We can do something, but the challenge most of the time is that we do not have resources, that is what we were discussing here – how to get those resources,” she said.

“We do not do this because we have all the money in the world, but we believe the efforts we do will make a difference in someone’s life.”

We can do something, but the challenge is mostly that we do not have resources