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Meet Therese Peho, who lives in the village of Adjouffou, located in
the Port Bouet section of Abidjan. She is shown with her new freezer.
Standing next to her are new customers buying frozen bissap, a sweet,
purple beverage.
This is our first freezer donation. Our idea behind the freezer is
this...Everywhere you drive in West Africa, people--women and
children--come
up to the car or van selling products. The reason for this is that in
order for women to run their families, feed the children, and send them
to school, they need money. The cash provided by the husband's coffee
or cocoa farm is highly seasonal, and once it has run out, that's it.
To earn extra money, women and children sell things: hard-boiled eggs,
smoked fish, roasted plantains, roasted peanuts, cassava fritters
(delicious!),
and frozen juices and water. If solar-powered freezers were provided,
they could make lots of healthy tropical juices and freeze them in bags
(which is what they already do). But availability of such a technology
would increase diversification, reducing financial dependency on just
one or two crops. Furthermore, the money would stay inside the
community. |
