Love Zimbabwe

Love Zimbabwe is a charity that trades arts and crafts made by artisans in Zimbabwe.  It works to further fair trade development and education in Wales and Zimbabwe while fostering global awareness and common unity.  It aims to relieve poverty, sickness and distress.

The project is the brainchild of Martha Musonza Holman and her husband David Holman.  While a geography teacher in Zimbabwe Martha became moved to tackle the problems around her; “I couldn’t accept that people were living in such poverty in my country” she recalls.  She did this despite facing her own difficulties, struggling to support herself and her children.  The path to setting up Love Zimbabwe was difficult.  “It was unheard of for Zimbabwean women to stand up for themselves,” she says, “people called me a prostitute for doing so.”  The turning point came while Martha was selling batik at a solar eclipse festival, to supplement her income.  She met a Welsh woman, who encouraged her to come to Wales to trade.  She met David and the couple now work on the project together, living ten months of the year in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, and the remaining two months in Zimbabwe.  One of Martha’s sons, who lives in Zimbabwe, works for the project to source products.

Unique hand-made ceramics and beautiful batik fabric form the majority of the trade through Love Zimbabwe.  Martha wanted to educate women about what they could make at home with the resources they already had, so that they could trade to support themselves and their families.  “Every home has a porridge stick, saucepan and flour,” she says – the basic yet essential tools required to produce batik.  The concept of fair trade wasn’t supported by the government, so setting up independent cooperatives to enable women to work together to help themselves was the only sensible way forward.  Empowering local women to trade their own way out of poverty is absolutely central to the project says Martha.  They are currently planning to build ceramics kilns using money raised by the project, to enable members of the artisan cooperatives to develop their businesses.

Martha and David can be found on their stall at many festivals and other events in and near Wales; their biggest annual event is the Glastonbury Festival.  Visit the Love Zimbabwe website to discover more about the charity.  They also run school workshops on fair trade, African dance, drumming and music.  Please contact them on 07879 400 897 or 01873 856 574 for more information.