BICYCLE IN A WOMAN'S LIFE | MAPUTO

Changing the lives of women in Mudada

In Matutuine district, in a place called Mudada, 16 women, between the ages of 23 and 39, work daily in the production of handicrafts, making real "works of art" from seeds that they collect on the banks of the Maputo River. Other materials such as coconut shells or even bovine bones are also transformed into earrings, necklaces, baskets, dish bases and dozens of other colorful and beautiful artifacts.

These women travel on foot to the small workshop to perform their art, traveling distances of several kilometers from their homes located in the poor communities of the Bela Vista area.

Most of them live in houses with no energy or water and on top of a two-hour walk to their workplace, they travel long distances daily to collect water for food and hygiene and firewood for cooking. In addition to these daily tasks they still have machambas (small plots of land that they farm) to care for, before and after the walk to / from work, which reduces production capacity due to extreme fatigue. They all have several school-age children and many of these women are the guarantors of the household's livelihood. Some are HIV-positive and must go to the Bela Vista Sanitary Clinic at least once a month for consultation and medication collection. On those days they are absent from work all day due to the distance, a bicycle would change the lives of these Women.

This campaign intends to provide bicycles for 12 of these women and will help them to have a better quality of life by allowing them to move easier and quicker, going to their machambas, health centers or school would be much simpler tasks to accomplish.

This project will provide:

• 12 Bicycles
• Transport to Bela Vista, Matatuine, Maputo Province
• Spare parts and accessories (Led Light, Pumps and tools)
• Basic training on bicycle care and maintenance
• Training of a Bicycle Mechanic, including a FULL SET of tools