On the island of Idjwi, almost all manufactured products must be brought in from the mainland by boat. There is very little industry on the island, thus increasing the cost of manufactured goods for the villagers.  One of the microfinance projects that has been undertaken is the establishment of a soap manufacturing industry.

Need: In the past local village women collected palm nuts and than sat on the ground with two stones and would work at cracking open each nut individually with the stones. The process was gruelling and only a small volume of palm nuts were actually harvested and thus it was not a profitable venture.

Solution: PROLASA has recently given a micro-loan to the soap manufacturing project for a machine to husk and grind the oil out of the palm nuts.

Benefit:This has provided an organized work opportunity for the village women, the house mothers from the Patmos Children’s Village  and the local men.

The process is as follows.

1. Village women are paid to collect palm nuts.

   

 

2. Boys from the Village spread the Palm Nuts in the sun to dry, and cover them at night.

 

3. Local men gather the dried nuts and use the machine PROLASA recently purchased to shell – grind – and refine the palm oil from the nuts.  The oil from the shells is used for soap, the rest of the shell as fertilizer for agricultural projects.

   

    

 

4. The house mothers then use the refined oil to make squares of soap.

 

5.  It is finally taken to the market a few hours walk away and sold.

 

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Help Needed for the Future: As this project engages more islanders, the future plans for expansion are to begin to export the soap and sell it in the city of Goma on the mainland.  But the biggest barrier in taking this step is the lack of regular reliable transportation between the island and the mainland.  If you would like to contribute to the boat motor project on which the soap expansion and all other PROLASA projects rely please visit our contributions page to find out more.