Carpenters teach fellow women in Swaziland
AN ALL-FEMALE team of carpenters from across south Wales shared their skills in Swaziland to help empower women in the community.
A team from the Positive Women charity visited the impoverished south African country for several weeks to pass on their knowledge to local women so they can earn an income for themselves.
The charity said that Swaziland previously had no women carpenters and in the UK women still struggle to be accepted in the industry.
The Tools for Life project saw eight women visit the country, where they spent six weeks training 20 local women in July after receiving a grant from a Cardiff charity.
Positive Women director Sarah Llewellyn, 37, from Swansea, said: “The female empowerment issue is massively important.
“The reason we originally organised it was because we knew it was really hard for women to feel empowered – there is a massive gen- der disparity over there.
“There was such a huge buzz around the whole community when we were there, and to see what the women could do before we had even left was amazing.”
The women learned how to make benches, which were then sold in the community at a local market.
Bordering South Africa, Swaziland is home to around one million people. The country has an uneven distribution of wealth and almost 70% of the population live in extreme poverty.
The team also taught the women the basics for running their own business and improving their confidence.
Sarah added: “It’s not just about the carpentry or training either – it’s about breaking down barriers.”
The project first took their team of women to Swaziland back in 2013, when they helped 10 women.
Sarah said: “It worked really well and we worked in a really rural area.
“There were no carpenters back then at all. We did all of the training in the community to make the women able to work in their own environment.”
Positive Women received a grant from the Hub Cymru charity, based in the Temple of Peace, to help fund the project.
Hub Cymru is supported by the Welsh Government and works with several other groups on projects across Africa, through an annual small grants scheme of £180,000 for various Wales-Africa projects.
Positive Women said they plan to continue the project at a later date and to set up the ability for people in the UK to purchase benches made by Swazi women.