Need: Arrangements were made to construct a building just off campus and a bakery was established. As bread baking is foreign to the island, a baker from off the island has been hired for a few months with the seed money, to teach the house mothers how to bake different types of bread. He will leave when the women have acquired the knowledge and skills to continue the bakery on their own.
Success! The house mothers take turns working in the bakery–each woman involved offering 1 hour of their day to baking. This is the only bakery on the island of Idjwi (population 210,000) and they have had no problem selling all of their bread. When we visited the island they had just received supplies from Goma for the bakery and three days later the bakery was almost sold out of bread, having sold 180 bags of bread (5 roles of bread per bag). In fact, the bread is in such high demand that the villagers are paying in advance for the bread. They sell the bread directly from the building they bake it in. They don’t even need to transport the bread to the local market. The villagers come to them!
Benefits: The Bakery serves three purposes:
- First it supports the housemothers and women around Patmos Children’s Village by giving them work opportunities.
- Second it provides an apprenticeship opportunity for the older girls of the Patmos Children’s Village.
- And thirdly it provides the only bread source for the surrounding villages at an affordable price in a land where everything must be cooked from scratch and there is no refrigeration - it sure saves a lot of time for women who would like to have some bread.
Current needs: At the present time the bakery is struggling to import the supplies needed for baking bread from the mainland. This is due to the loss of PROLASA’s Boat Motor (link to boat motor page). This has made the cost very high and regularity of boat trips very unpredictable. Thus the baking initiative cannot keep up with the demand of their product. PROLASA is making the purchase of a new and reliable boat motor their top priority.
If you would like to contribute to the financing of a new boat motor please feel free to see our Contributions page.