ROIDA FROM THE MABINTI CENTRE
"I’m Roida, and I’m 29 years old. I graduated from the Mabinti Centre in 2012, and now I show others how to screen print. I am hearing impaired, yet this has never been a problem in my work, and I have always found the Centre to be an inclusive environment. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with such wonderful people."
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The Mabinti Centre ('Mabinti' meaning 'girls') - a small project of CCBRT (indigenous provider of disability services in Tanzania) - seeks to empower women recovering from fistula surgery. Fistula is a childbirth related injury caused by prolonged or obstructed labour without timely medical intervention. The consequences are life-shattering: most mothers loose their babies during childbirth, and afterwards suffer from chronic incontinence. As a result of the injury,
women with fistula are often abandoned by their families and rejected from their communities, forced to live in shame and isolation.
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Over the course of an year, these women of Mabinti Centre are trained not only in technical skills such as screen-printing , sewing, batik, beading & crochet, but also entrepreneurial skills such as budgeting and communications, in order to thrive as business owners. All of these skills allow the Mabinti women to leave the Centre with the confidence to become successful, independent and healthy members of their communities.
