This job has really helped me. Now I can pay my children’s school fees, I can buy food for my family and also help my relatives through this job.”
“We are working towards doing the right thing, so whenever we see plastic bags we pick them up; it has become a valuable thing now. Because of us there are few plastic bags in the streets compared to how it was before. The program has really helped.”
The bags sell for between N1000 to and N12,000, depending on size and quality.
The programme coordinator, Raymond Obindu said: “We’ve seen a single woman alone, make over 1.5 to 2 million Naira alone because she was extremely good; she has bought a land, she’s got a computer, she has trained her children in school, so we’ve seen the economic benefits the women are having so the money spreads that way.”
Obindu also said that the essence of AUN’s Waste-to-Wealth initiative is to change lives and clean up the environment.
“Plastic and other waste litter the environment; they don’t degrade or decompose. This exhibition is to say that these things can also create income.”
Women in Yola have been trying to revamp their economy after the seven-year campaign by Boko Haram militants disrupted their lives.