All Womenrecycling focuses on giving unemployed single mothers work. This company turns used plastic bottles into creative gift boxes called kliketyklikboxes. The company provides work not just for women making the boxes, but dump-site sorters who find the bottles, vehicle drivers who deliver the materials and the product, and the street-waste collectors. The company currently has clients in 11 countries and has plans to expand.
Appropriate Energy Saving Technologies works with farmers in Uganda’s Teso District, collecting a product from the farmers that they naturally have—bio-waste—and turning it into a product they need—sustainable cooking fuel. The company employs local women and youth to help make the products and has plans to train 150 more women and 200 more young people to work for the company and spread the word of sustainable fuel alternatives.
Arusha Women Entrepreneur is providing income and employment opportunities for women and smallholder farmers in Arusha. The company gets peanuts from local farmers and trains women on how to make natural peanut butter, and sell it. The company follows strict gender quotas to make sure women can take on leadership positions in the company.
This company not only provides employment opportunities for disadvantaged women and indigenous people living near the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, but it also discourages gorilla hunting. The enterprise farms and sells organic oyster mushrooms in the Kanungu District of Uganda, employing the local community and encouraging them to stop deforesting the gorilla habitats, which are where the lucrative mushrooms thrive.
Baobab Products Mozambique is the first business in the country to deliver the nutritious and healing parts of the baobab fruit to international markets. The company trains local women to harvest and process this fruit, and supply it to markets.
Botanica Natural Products has turned the head of cosmetic markets towards South Africa, because here you can find the bulbinefrutescens—an indigenous plant with gels that can be used to make natural cosmetics. The company employs locals to pick and process the plant and has plans to cultivate the plant for further uses such as veterinary and fertilizer products.
Bringing Gas Nearer To People brings liquefied petroleum gas to communities in Uganda that otherwise struggle to access the sustainable form of energy, or cannot afford it. The company offers alternative payment methods, and even door-to-door delivery. The company has franchises, and plans to add more female franchisees in 2015.
Budongo Women Bee Enterprise is benefiting the economy and the environment in the Masindi region by not only encouraging and teaching local women how to be beekeepers and sell their product, but also teaching sustainable beekeeping methods that adapt to climate change.
The Mobile Solar Computer Classroom travels Uganda in SUVs filled with solar-powered computers, visiting rural schools and libraries. Inside the SUV is all the equipment and teachers necessary to teach computer skills to those in rural communities. The establishments that choose to take sessions pay a small fee but the company gets most of its money through grants.
Kataara Women’s Poverty Alleviation Group teaches women in rural communities how to make paper out of elephant dung, and turn that paper into cards, notebooks and other stationery products to sell to tourists. Profits from the sales go back into the business, as well as a micro-loan scheme the company has available for its members.
KadAfrica gives land rent free to young rural women and teaches them how to run small passion fruit farms. The company calls the program an internship and it runs for about two-and-a-half years during which time the company acts as a customer to the women farmers, buying their product and teaching them finance and life skills.
greenABLE found a way to recycle the plastic and metal from printer cartridges and provides employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, either as workers at the recycling facility or as home-based cartridge collectors.
