Help Girls to Fight Child Marriage in Zimbabwe

This report is going to 172 friends who have donated $7,027 to our three GlobalGiving appeals on behalf of girls in Zimbabwe since 2019. Thank you!

The funds have gone to help our partner in Harare, Women Advocacy Project (WAP) prevent early and child marriage. This is done by producing and selling soap, which gives the girls confidence and puts money in their pockets. We've described this novel approach in previous reports and I'll provide an update later in this message.

Over the past couple of years we have also profiled the sterling efforts of fifteen American students at three high schools in the US, who have raised money for the education of the young soap-makers in Zimbabwe by making and selling their own soap.

We are pleased to report that these two initiatives, in the US and Africa, have combined to produce a wonderful outcome.

The first two soap-makers in Zimbabwe to receive education support from the US have just graduated from high school with flying colors! Five other soap-makers in Harare also passed their exams at the end of 2024 and have returned to school for this academic year.

Here's how it happened.

The Clean Girl soap business

WAP’s soap program began in 2019 in response to the threat from early and child marriage. Over a third of all girls in Zimbabwe marry below the legal age of 18, and WAP was looking for a way to reverse this.

Our first appeal on GlobalGiving in 2019 generated $1,766 and WAP used this to provide soap training for about twenty girls from two of the poorest neighborhoods, Epworth and Chitungwiza. The girls caught on quickly and developed a thick and gooey all-purpose liquid soap which they branded as Clean Girl. By the end of 2019 they had filled about 3,000 bottles which they sold at stores (known as "tuck shops") near their homes.

Like all start-ups this was a gamble, but this one has really paid off! Last year over a hundred girls filled and sold an astounding 88,914 bottles of Clean Girl soap, at a dollar a bottle. Eighty percent of the profits were shared by the girls, who each received $656 (in some cases more than their parents earned). The remaining income was ploughed back into WAP's soap program. Last year WAP also attracted an additional $73,887 from six donors in South Korea, Switzerland, Germany and the US.

Talk about growth and scale! And all this from less than $2,000 of seed money donated back in 2019.

Education

The education initiative emerged from the Clean Girl soap program in 2022 after our Peace Fellow Dawa (a graduate student at Texas A&M) conducted a survey of the young soap-makers in Harare and found that almost half had not finished secondary school. The reason was simple – their families could not afford the school fees, even though the girls were starting to earn money through soap sales.

By 2023 the Clean Girl soap business was attracting grants from larger donors so we decided - at WAP’s request - to move away from soap and start a small fund to support the education of five girls whose families were under extreme pressure. They included Tatenda, shown in the photo above, and Tanatswa, both 15.

We also put out the word to high school students in the US that were looking to support a good cause and learn about Africa. Two groups responded, from the Wakefield high school in Arlington (Virginia) and the South Forsyth School in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2024 they were joined by a team from the University School in Nashville, led by Ruby, 13. (Photos below).

All three high schools turned to YouTube and - after much trial and error - developed their own brand of Clean Girl soap at home. They then sold their soap to neighbors, and at stores and markets. So far they have raised an impressive $2,940.

Along the way we also arranged for some of the girls from the US and Zimbabwe to meet on Zoom and share videos of their very different life-styles. Paidamoyo in Zimbabwe has impressed us with her dancing, while Ruby took the plunge in an icy pool in Nashville.

Impact

These heroics in Zimbabwe and the US have put 38 WAP girls through school since 2023, and helped to keep early marriage at bay. Over three hundred girls have worked on the Clean Girl project since 2019, and not one has married under the legal age of 18.

The education initiative has also had a huge impact on the beneficiaries in Zimbabwe, as we learned from Tatenda during a visit to the Epworth neighborhood in the summer of 2023.

After displaying her marching skills, Tatenda sat down with her friends under a large tree and explained how she had found WAP in the first place. Click here to watch a short video. She recalled trying to keep up with other girls, who pressed her to find money by dating men – a sure-fire way to get sucked into marriage and say goodbye to school.

Just when things were looking really bad, Tatenda was referred to WAP and joined the WAP girls’ club in Epworth. She was liked and respected by the other girls and this boosted her confidence. She enjoyed getting peer support instead of peer pressure.

Tatenda also enrolled in WAP’s soap-making project and began earning money. As she explained in the video: “Once I came here my life changed for good. Now I can stand on my own. I am not interested in other peoples’ money because I have my own money.”

It all culminated in Tatenda's graduation and she is proud of her grades: A in religion, B in family studies; and C in sociology. She now wants to go to college.

This is everything we could have hoped for, and we recently transferred another $1,000 to WAP from our core program to support more scholarships this year. All new donations to our current GlobalGiving appeal will go to this very worthy cause!

Looking ahead

We draw several conclusions from WAP's success in Zimbabwe.

First, and most important, the idea and drive for Clean Girl has come not from outside donors, but from the stakeholders in Zimbabwe who are directly affected by early marriage and poverty. Such pressure is a spur to innovation and initiative, as Tatenda and the other WAP scholars have shown.

Second, modest support can produce a huge return. Your donations back in 2019 provided the seed money for a business that generated almost $163,000 last year - half through sales and the rest from grants. And we have every reason to believe it will continue. WAP has purchased new machines from China that will boost productivity by speeding up the mixing of soap and making the bottling process faster and more efficient. Donors remain impressed. The latest to come on board is a Dutch NGO that has supplied computers for a training center.

Finally, education and income-generation go hand in hand in addressing the threat from early marriage. The best way for girls like Tatenda to avoid early marriage is to stay in school. But this will only happen if her school feeds are paid.

We thank you again for your invaluable support!

The AP team in Washington