Zimbabwean Entrepreneur Trains AIDS Orphans to Recycle Videocassettes Into Salable Apparel

BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE – In a dilapidated shed behind a residential house in Bulawayo, a city in southwestern Zimbabwe, a woman and a group of girls intently probe heaps of videocassettes amassed from street alleys, roadsides and dumping sites.

The run-down shed resembles a junkyard, with an assortment of discarded items, such as plastic carrier bags and plastic soft-drink bottles, in addition to the videotapes. Everything is piled on the ground, as there are no shelves for storage.

The woman, Georgina Chidziya, 47, is the gregarious and industrious tenant of the house and has collected most of the videocassettes. She built the shed to have a place to practice her childhood hobbies – knitting and fashion design – and to impart her skills to girls and women in vulnerable situations in the community.

By offering free training in knitting and sewing, Chidziya aims to empower girls and women to become economically independent so they can support themselves and their families. The majority of her trainees are girls whose parents died from HIV or AIDS and women living with HIV.

One material they use is the magnetic tape from unwanted videocassettes, a once-popular medium that has become obsolete.

Chidziya got the idea to recycle electronic waste one day when she was training some girls to crochet clothing, she says. The girls, who must bring their own supplies to the training, could not afford cotton thread, so Chidziya thought of an alternative: magnetic tape.

Chidziya has also showed her trainees that it is possible to earn a living by crafting recycled materials into fashionable clothing and accessories and selling them. She recycles the magnetic tape from discarded videocassettes to make items such as sun hats, traditional Zulu hats, skirts, blouses and jackets. She also uses the videotapes’ plastic cases to make handbags and wallets.

The need to support orphans, vulnerable children and marginalized women in the community was the motivation for the electronic waste recycling project, says Chidziya, a mother of four children. Her passion has always been to support orphans and vulnerable children, and she took up HIV and AIDS advocacy after testing positive for HIV in 2000.

She is a board member at Youth for a Child in Christ, an organization that provides psycho-social support to orphans and other vulnerable children. She also supports HIV-positive women in maintaining the proper intake of their HIV medicines.

Bulawayo metropolitan province was awash with videocassette shops in the 1990s, Chidziya says. Their popularity was due to the limited media options in Zimbabwe at the time, when there was only one government-owned television channel and four government-owned radio stations.

“Each shop would have scores of copies for one popular movie,” she says. “The advent of compact discs resulted in the collapse of the business. Thousands of copies were disposed in harmful ways, such as burning or just dumping them in the street.”

So Chidziya began collecting these copies instead. After starting her sewing and knitting training in 1999, she launched the videocassette recycling project in 2002, she says. She has trained 160 girls and 34 women to use videocassettes in textile arts.

When word got out that Chidziya was putting the videotapes to good use, owners of videocassette retail stores from all over the Bulawayo metropolitan province contacted her to come to collect their outdated videocassettes, she says.

Talent Moyo, 41, owned a shop that sold videocassettes in Bulawayo for four years. New technologies forced him to shut down the shop in 2003, he says.

“I had more than a thousand cassettes for selling and hiring out,” he says. “When business collapsed, I had no idea what to do with them. I had no space in my house for storage.”

Chidziya’s recycling venture offered him a way to recycle the tapes in 2007, he says.

“When I heard about Chidziya’s project,” he says, “I quickly tracked her down and offered all the cassettes to her for free.”

Chidziya says the demand for her products is increasing. The key advantages of products made from magnetic tape are that they are durable and do not require washing. A simple wipe with a damp cloth is enough to clean them. This saves her customers time and money.

Her clothing items range in price from $4 to $8, with a sun hat costing $6 and a skirt selling for $8, she says. She can make multiple items from each videocassette.

"Each magnetic tape can make three hats, and I can earn at least $15 from each discarded videocassette,” she says. “Through the sale of my products, I earn an average income of $400 per month, which I use to care for my family.”

Chidziya makes and sells her own products, but when items are in high demand, she sometimes employs her trainees to help. She sells her products from her home and at trade fairs and festivals.

Sitholakhele Moyo is one of Chidziya’s customers. She is pleased with the sun hat she bought from Chidziya, who crafted it from magnetic tape, and would purchase a replacement if the one she has gets torn, she says.

“I bought the hat several months ago, and I am happy with it,” she says. “It is strong and protects me from the sun because it has a wide brim. This is the hat that I always wear when I go to my fields or when I am doing gardening because it is also easy to wash and dry.”

Chidziya provides her expertise and example of entrepreneurial success to the girls and women who come for her free informal trainings.

Tacisous Siniwa, 12, is one of the girls who have acquired skills in fashion design and knitting from Chidziya. Her parents died from HIV, and she started training with Chidziya in November 2012.

“I now have a wide range of options when I finally decide on what career to take,” she says. “Right now, I am just taking this training for the sake of enjoying myself. I see that there are opportunities for making money, which I can use to pay for my school fees.”

Tacisous has not yet started to make any products for sale, she says. She wants to take her time experimenting with various waste products until she finds her own unique style.  

Chidziya’s daughter, Nothando Chidziya, 26, is a hospitality professional who works for a local three-star hotel. She is proud of her mother, she says.

“I am proud of her ingenuity,” she says. “Her work is in line with the current drive in the hospitality industry of promoting the three R’s, that is, reuse, reduce, recycle.”

Chidziya has expanded her recycling project to include recycling plastic bags and old clothes into baby dolls, teddy bears and other items for children. She also makes liquid toilet cleaners, dishwashers and other detergents and packages the products in discarded plastic bottles for soft drinks and water that she collects in the streets.

Chidziya’s work in the local community is gaining wider recognition.

In August 2013, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development invited her to showcase her products at the U.N. World Tourism Organization General Assembly session in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

Local and international visitors came to view and to purchase Chidziya’s goods during the conference, and she sold many products, she says.

“The support that I have received from the community is pushing me to work hard and design different products for my customers,” she says, mentioning a bikini crafted from cables salvaged from DVD players.

But customers are not the only people she wants to serve.

“I want to satisfy my customers and at the same time open avenues for young girls to become entrepreneurs at an early age,” she says.

GPJ translated some interviews from Shona.