Restless Development

Mwila isn’t a business strategist or a management consultant. She is a young person, who, with a little bit of training, set up her own business and is now using her experience to multiply decent livelihoods for young people in her community.

This is a common theme of our work: young leaders multiplying change. Mubanga, a Restless Development volunteer, trained Mwila, who is now supporting Beatrice.  Mwila’s financial independence granted by her fritter business means she can afford to pay for her children’s education and ensure their educations are not cut short like her own, giving them a better chance at life. “In my community, most women are housewives. I encourage them not to entirely depend on their husbands to provide and recruit them to our Community Savings Group so that they are able to start their own businesses. I tell them about the importance of a woman being financially independent and how it leads to her entire family being financially empowered." “After I noticed the benefits of our Community Savings Groups, we initiated the formation of a youth savings group where young people save and borrow money.

“I’m happy that the group has transitioned into a skills centre where young people are learning different skills in tailoring and catering and I’m proud that the group now makes clothes, which they sell in the community. Part of the income from their sales is invested as savings in the group and later shared out as loans.

“Some of the members of the groups have even started their own businesses while others have used the savings to further their education.“

Read more about Mwila's story here: https://restlessdevelopment.org/2020/06/the-training-i-received-transformed-me/

We have young volunteers trained and willing to be deployed in the fight against Covid-19 across both Africa and Asia. Sierra Leone had only recently come out the other side of the Ebola pandemic which had devastating affects on their communities. Our young leaders who were essential in the fight against Ebola, have transferred these skills to fight yet another virus.

Since April our young people in Sierra Leone have been raising awareness on COVID-19 with hand washing demonstrations, door to door sensitisation, community radio and broadcast TV. 25 year old Fatmata - is one of the 784 young people working with us across all districts of Sierra Leone right now. Before COVID, she was doing life saving work with us keeping pregnant women and their children from dying in childbirth. Her work continues, but with a little training she’s also now giving out life saving messages on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as part of DFID’s flagship COVID-19 response programme in Sierra leone.

We’ve been training young people across our hubs to provide accurate information on COVID-19 and to provide it where people will hear it. It sounds obvious but good communications is one of the most overlooked aspects of crisis response. In our Zimbabwe hub, this means young people like Nyasha are targeting people at community hotspots such as waterpoints and marketplaces and in our Zambia hub, we’re running facebook lives with medical experts and mapping whatsapp spaces to reach over 5,800 young people with COVID-19 approved messages. In our India, Uganda and Tanzania hubs, we’ve also co-created a global educational video series #youthagainstcovid19, translating and contextualising each video to reach even more people (the campaign has amassed over 500k views so far).

Read more about Nyasha's story here: https://restlessdevelopment.org/nyasha-s-story-keeping-her-community-safe-from-covid-19-1

Read more about Fatmata's story here: https://restlessdevelopment.org/i-will-keep-pushing-until-i-succeed