From crowded informal settlements to conservation areas teeming with wildlife, cottage industries have popped up around the globe producing and distributing face masks for frontline workers, taxi drivers, market sellers and more. Usually comprised of two fabric layers with a disposable filter, mask-making enterprises are stoking local economies and helping communities. In Samburu County in northern Kenya, a wildlife conservation trust that protects endangered zebras has shifted its operations from producing reusable sanitary pads for local girls to zebra-patterned cloth face masks for the whole community. Grevy’s Zebra Trust normally employs girls and women in the Wamba region to monitor zebra populations. It also runs an income-generating programme for women and girls to make sanitary pads, which they sell at school or in their communities. But as soon as Kenya went into lockdown, the trust shifted towards producing face masks as a means of protecting local populations, said co-founder Belinda Low Mackey.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
More Stories
The Marshall Nature Reserve Gives a Different Glimpse of the Sudanese Capital
The Journey of Moving Tanzanians Around
Correcting Kinshasa’s Commodity Crisis
Can African Leaders Rate Themselves?
First Black African to Win Grand Tour Stage
Financing Dangote’s Fertiliser Dream Tougher than Expected
This is a Moment for the Women of Kenya
US Support in Somalia Couldn’t Have Come at a Better Time
A Symbol of Sudan’s Resistance
Families of Trapped Miners in Limbo
Google Translate Announces an Addition of 10 Languages Spoken in Africa
All Four Tourists Reported Missing in the Fish River Canyon have been Accounted For