News — women

In Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, over 500,000 tonnes of plastic waste is recorded in a place with a little over four million inhabitants. The figure for waste produced across the entire country is reportedly in millions, monthly. This is largely so because of the throw-away culture many plastic users have adopted as plastics are not only easy to come by but are cheaper and convenient to use.

Several attempts to get rid of plastics in Kenya have been met by resistance not only by the producers but by consumers who find plastic bags convenient and easy to use compared to paper bags.

Kenya did ban the use of plastic bags and other plastic products in 2017 as its major cities struggled to deal with the debris they were engulfed in. It was a decision that divided public opinion but whose fruits have been undeniable some years on. But it is difficult to completely fall on alternatives when the production of such alternatives cannot meet demand.

The Kenyan government may have challenges in its effort to control plastic waste but some entrepreneurs in the East African nation are providing solutions, albeit on a small scale.

One of such persons is Nzambi Matee, the founder of Gjenge Makers. The firm specializes in converting plastic waste into building materials. The building blocks she makes from plastic wastes are reportedly five times stronger than cement blocks.

She told Reuters that her factory processes waste that facilities “cannot process anymore, they cannot recycle. “That is what we get.” The factory produces about 1,500 blocks daily, in different sizes and colors, which is more than what some cement factories produce in Kenya. These include paving stones, paving slabs, and manhole covers.

The factory’s products are made from plastic that was originally used for milk and shampoo bottles, cereal and sandwich bags, buckets, and ropes. Since opening, Matee tells Reuters her factory has processed over 20 tons of waste.

The plastic waste is mixed with sand, heated and then compressed into bricks, which are sold at varying prices, depending on thickness and colour. Their common grey bricks cost 850 Kenyan shillings ($7.70) per square metre, for example, according to Reuters. 

Matee decided to venture into a sector dominated by men after quitting her job as an engineer in Kenya’s oil industry. “I shut down my social life for a year, and put all my savings into this,” she said. “My friends were worried,” she said.

Her career path was also in protest of the failings of the Kenyan government in dealing with plastic waste. A materials engineer by training, she established her factory after developing a prototype of a machine that turns waste into blocks.

“It is absurd that we still have this problem of providing decent shelter – a basic human need,’ said Matee. ‘Plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. The potential is enormous, but it after life can be disastrous.”

The startup, which was founded in 2018, has so far employed some 110 people and hopes to add a much bigger manufacturing line that will triple her production capacity in the near future. She believes there is enormous potential in plastic waste

“It is absurd that we still have this problem of providing decent shelter – a basic human need,” said Matee, according to UNEP. “Plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. The potential is enormous, but it’s after life can be disastrous.”

In 2020, she emerged as one of the seven winners of the Young Earth Champions initiative instituted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The award provides seed funding and mentorship to promising environmentalists as they tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.

Matee wants young Kenyans and others worldwide to tackle environmental challenges in their small ways. The negative effect of plastic on our environment is huge, says Matee. “It’s up to us to make this reality better. Start with whatever local solution you can find and be consistent with it. The results will be amazing.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has elected its first Black President in its 101-year history. Deborah Archer, a clinal law professor at New York University School of Law, was elected virtually over the weekend by the union’s 69-member board of directors and she brings to this position her expertise in civil rights and racial justice.

Now as ACLU president Archer succeeds Susan Herman, a Brooklyn Law School professor who has been president since 2008. She will act as the chair of the board of directors overseeing organizational matters and the setting of civil liberties policies.

The fight against racial injustice is expected to be a top priority. However, the organization’s day-to-day operations are managed by its executive director, Anthony D. Romero.

Per their press release, Archer has a long history with ACLU joining at the beginning of her prolific career as a legal fellow in its Racial Justice Program and has been a board member since 2009 and only began work as their general counsel in 2017.

“After beginning my career as an ACLU fellow, it is an honor to come full circle and now lead the organization as board president,” said Archer.

“The ACLU has proven itself as an invaluable voice in the fight for civil rights in the last four years of the Trump era, and we are better positioned than ever to face the work ahead.

This organization has been part of every important battle for civil liberties during our first century, and we are committed to continuing that legacy as we enter our second. I could not be more excited to get to work,” she added.

Aside from her professorship Archer is the director of the Civil Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law and a co-faculty director of the Center on Race Inequality and the Law at NYU Law.

She as also served in the capacity of inaugural dean of diversity and inclusion and as associate dean for academic affairs and student engagement at New York Law School.

According to Romero, there is no person better suited to launch the ACLU into its next phase than Archer.

“There is no one better equipped, who best personifies or is more capable to helm the future battles for civil rights, civil liberties, and systemic equality than Deborah Archer.”

Archer, born to Jamaican parents, has also worked as assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and is a former associate at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett. She served as chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, and on numerous non-profit boards, including the Legal Aid Society and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. 

Last year was a tumultuous one for everyone especially since America dealt with the novel coronavirus amid calls for racial equality. The fight against white supremacy and racism last year, which according to the ACLU can only be rivaled by the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, ultimately culminated in the highest voter turnout in American history.

According to a statement, ACLU “filed its 413th legal action against the Trump administration, took over 100 legal actions in response to the pandemic, continued its work to protect protestors, and filed more than 37 lawsuits to ensure access to the polls” as it celebrated its centennial year.

“The ACLU has proven itself as an invaluable voice in the fight for civil rights in the last four years of the Trump era, and we are better positioned than ever to face the work ahead,” Archer said.

For describing Indonesian island Bali as “queer-friendly” and suggesting she could help foreigners enter the island amid the coronavirus, Black American woman Kristen Gray was deported Thursday. Immigration officials on the island said they deported the 28-year-old for “spreading information that could unsettle the public” and getting involved in “dangerous activities” that could endanger public order.

Gray was arrested three days after posting a thread on Twitter about Bali being LGBT-friendly and praising it for its low cost of living. She also went ahead to promote an e-book, “Our Bali Life Is Yours,” that she wrote with her partner, Saundra Alexander. The couple had left the United States last January largely due to its high cost of living and had planned to stay six months.

However, they continued to stay in Bali after Indonesian authorities halted international travel following the spread of the coronavirus. In the Twitter thread, Gray wrote that their stay has been worth it as they were now paying $400 for a treehouse compared with $1,300 for a studio in Los Angeles. “This island has been amazing because of our elevated lifestyle at a much lower cost of living,” Gray wrote. “Being a digital nomad is everything.”

Balinese are mostly Hindu, though Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority nation in the world where LGBT people do continue to face discrimination, BBC reported. In a statement, the immigration office in Bali said Gray’s posts on Twitter, which caused a backlash online, could “unsettle the public” as it could suggest that the island was welcoming to gay men and lesbians or that it’s not difficult entering Indonesia during the pandemic.

Gray and her partner, Alexander, 30, were deported on Thursday morning after flying to Jakarta from Bali on Wednesday evening and staying overnight, The New York Times reported. The two boarded a flight to Los Angeles with a stopover in Tokyo, the report added.

Gray had said she was targeted because of her comments on LGBT. “I am not guilty,” she earlier told reporters at the immigration detention center on Tuesday. “I put out a statement about L.G.B.T. and I am being deported because of L.G.B.T.”

Her lawyer, Erwin Siregar, couldn’t agree more. He argued that the deportation of Gray and her partner was “unfair” as they were not even given the opportunity to prove their case in court. “They are good people,” Siregar said of the couple. “They can persuade tourists to come to Indonesia after the pandemic is over without a cent of payment. We should thank them, not deport them.”

In November last year, Georgia’s most populous counties made history electing four Black Sheriffs for the first time ever in a time when law enforcement officers have come under heavy attacks. Another woman sheriff in rural Georgia, Tia McWilliams, has also made history as the first-ever African-American woman sheriff in Taliaferro County.

After nearly twenty years of working with the Sheriff’s office, most recently as Chief Deputy, McWilliams is excited about her new position, a role she would have never envisioned for herself as a child in Georgia because there were barely any women police officers.

She admits she got into law enforcement after a friend recommended her for a role and now she is willing to do the same for others while inspiring the next generation of Black women to chase their dreams.

“When I found myself to be unemployed and looking for a job, it was by a friend who I had helped that I was able to be referred to this position,” she recalled.

“Allow me to be a beacon of light in this world and allow me to shine bright for all those who I encounter,” McWilliams said to WBTW.

After her latest appointment, she decided to declutter her life by having a 21 day fast to help focus on giving out her best. “I immediately went into a 21 day fast and I cleaned out all distractions and anything that would allow me to be distracted from doing my absolute best,” the Sheriff told NewsChannel 6’s Shawn Cabbagestalk.

McWilliams is in a male-dominated workforce but she is ever ready to deliver because she certainly brings her expertise to the table regardless of her gender, she said. She added that she is ready to “step up to the plate” and serve the people of Taliaferro County to the best of her ability.

Although it’s been a long time coming for a Black woman to wield such authority in her county, she acknowledges there is a higher power who knew exactly when to give her this opportunity.

“I don’t think it took long. I think to everything there is a time and season and God is always in control. This is a male-dominated world, but in the words of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, it’s a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothing without a woman or girl,” McWilliams said.

The mother of two has plans of transforming her station by ensuring that her officers improve on their skills through in-house training. With infrastructural developments, McWilliams wants to renovate the 911 operations center. She intends on making the place more accommodating for the operators as they are currently housed in a small space.

The San Diego Assemblymember and Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, Shirley Weber, has been nominated by Gov. Gavin Newsom as the next California Secretary of State. If approved by the state legislature, Weber will be the first Black woman to ever hold the position of California Secretary of State.

The 72-year-old has represented the 79th Assembly District since 2012. She was a professor at the San Diego State University and has served on the San Diego Board of Education.

After confirmation, Weber will be the fourth woman to be named California’s Secretary of State otherwise known as California’s chief elections officer, a role Weber was born to hold because her family has been involved in getting people to vote.

The California native’s parents were sharecroppers from Arkansas who fled a lynch mob and finally settled in Los Angles. Weber’s family fled Arkansas when she was only three because her sharecropper father had refused to “back down during a dispute with a white farmer”, a report said. Per a press release, Weber’s father did not get to vote until his 30s and her grandfather died before the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, so voting was only a dream he held on to till he died.

“Dr. Weber is a tireless advocate and change agent with unimpeachable integrity,” Newsom said in a written statement, noting her family’s trek to Los Angeles from the rural South where they were not allowed to vote, LA Times reports.

As a child in South Central Los Angeles, her parents were voting activists who availed their living room for the state to use as a local polling station. Weber recalls seeing them rearrange furniture at their home to serve as a polling site for different elections.

“Now, she’ll be at the helm of California’s elections as the next Secretary of State — defending and expanding the right to vote and serving as the first African American to be California’s Chief Elections Officer,” said Newsom.

Retired professor Weber earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees at UCLA. She received her doctorate from the same school at the age of 26 and worked for over four decades at the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.

The mother of two and wife of the late California state Judge Daniel Weber said she is up for the challenge, adding that the integrity of the voting system will be her priority.

“I am excited to be nominated for this historic appointment as the secretary of state of California,” Weber said. I thank Governor Newsom for the confidence he’s placed in me and his belief that I will stand strong for California. Being the first African-American woman in this position will be a monumental responsibility, but I know that I am up for the challenge,” she said, ABC7 reported.

She has always fought for the passage of bills for those who are unable to fight for themselves and now she will be in a better position to continue. “Expanding voting rights has been one of the causes of my career and will continue to motivate me as I assume my new constitutional duties,” she added.

Her predecessor, Alex Padilla, was appointed around the same time by Gov. Newsom to represent California at the senate, a seat previously held by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The appointment makes Padilla California’s first Latino U.S. senator.

Padilla refers to Weber as a fierce advocate for civil rights and voting rights. She is also a mentor to many in her community and has created a leadership network for young women of color.

In 2015, Jamila Souffrant commuted about three hours where she lived in Brooklyn, NY to work in New Jersey every day. At the same time, she was about to become a mother of two. However, her job schedule gave her little room for respite and she began making moves for a flexible job.

“It wasn’t necessarily about just the commute, but I felt like that was the catalyst to make me feel like there’s something else out there for me,” Souffrant told BusinessInsider. “Because I don’t want to, like, have a family and spend most of my day just not completely fulfilled. There must be another way.” 

The commercial real estate executive became fascinated with stories of people who retired early from traditional work on the back of their savings, investment and debt pay off. Inspired by such stories, she started a side hustle: blogging. She began writing about how she intends to accomplish her financial independence goals and create a community with others with similar goals. She would soon realize that she could generate some income from her blog. Blogging then became a side hustle for her. 

“My first big money objective was to invest as much of our income as possible. We took a hard look at our expenses: Anything that did not allow us to reach our saving and the investing goal was reduced or cut entirely,” Souffrant wrote on CNBC. Within two years (2016 and 2017), Souffrant and her husband saved and invested $169,000 after creating a budget that focused on contributing the maximum amounts to her 401(k) and her husband’s 403(b) and 457 plans.

Accomplishing that goal helped her turn her blogging side hustle into a career she was so passionate about. Her blog, Journey to Launch, is now her full career. She runs the blog on a full-time basis and also has a podcast educating people on their finances and how to achieve financial freedom. 

In addition, she earns money through coaching, working with brands, writing articles, and selling products and services. “Through trial and error, I’ve learned so much that has helped me during this moment,” she said. 

In 2018 when she gave birth to her third child, she quit her job to focus solely on building her blog. She monetized her blog, including her podcast as well as building out her event and speaking income. 

Souffrant hopes her readers will pick one or two financial tips on her blog to help them get out of debt or improve their credit score. One of her maxims is that to save more, it’s equally important to grow your income and that includes further education. 37-year-old Souffrant worked in corporate America since she was 22 before going back to school to get her master’s in real estate while working. The move, she said, put her at a different level where she could then apply for a job that paid more money.

Amid COVID-19, Brittany Pickens saw an opportunity that could directly impact the people disproportionately affected by COVID-19. The New York native, who now resides in Atlanta, launched The Juice Girl in August because of one pressing question she continued to ask herself. What is essential right now? Picken’s answer is simple. Our health. 

Pickens shared why she started The Juice Girl, how she is differentiating herself, and advice for women starting a business during the pandemic.

What prompted you to start the The Juice Girl? 

During the pandemic, I had to think about what’s essential. I realized that all the restaurants were closed and the juice bars were the only thing open. COVID is very serious and it’s very important to boost your immune system at this current time. After that, I decided to start my own juice company.  

How do you differentiate yourself in the juicing market?

I think within the market I stand apart because I’m bringing new and fresh handmade recipes to the juice market. Customer service and satisfying my customers’ needs are top priority for me. The Juice Girl is big on customizing juice to a specific customer’s liking. We have a menu of options but each is customizable to fit the individual. We also offer a delivery service in metro Atlanta, which allows us to meet customers where they are. 

Tell us about your offerings.

There are five Juice Girl drinks:

PINEAPPLE SUNRISE – Pineapple, Strawberries
GREEN GODDESS – Cucumber, Green Apple, Lemon, Kale, Kiwi, Sea Moss
CARROT PARADISE – Carrots, Lemon, Pineapple, Sea Moss
BEET BERRY – Beets, Strawberries, Blueberries, Ginger, Raspberries, Sea Moss 
KICK-START – Lemon, Strawberries, Pineapples, Kale, Mango, Sea Moss

And two Juice Girl shots:

GRASS IS GREENER – Wheatgrass, Ginger, Sea Moss 
BOOST ME UP – Oranges, Lemon, Turmeric, Ginger, Sea Moss

What advice do you have for women itching to start their business during the ongoing pandemic?

Work hard and deliver a great product. You can’t allow the current state of the country to stop you. Just start! Start where you are with what you have and believe in yourself because all things are possible. 

The wine industry isn’t the most inclusive when it comes to ownership.Despite this fact, many entrepreneurs have managed to enter the market. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic creating new restrictions for businesses as cities try to combat the outbreak, many have had to find new ways to adapt so their businesses don’t close.

One entrepreneur managed to pivot her brand into the virtual space with a wine society catered to Black women.

Shayla Varnado is the founder of Black Girls Wine. Her business was off to an amazing start, but like many entrepreneurs, she faced new challenges when the COVID-19 pandemic began to force cities to shut down. She had to act fast to protect the brand and her team from the fallout.

“In the beginning, some of the biggest hurdles were figuring out the technology. Between platforms and communicating to our members what was to come, there was a small adjustment period,” Varnado told BLACK ENTERPRISE via email.

“I had to decide whether or not I was ready to expand the team,” she added. “I knew after hosting a month of virtual events that I wouldn’t be able to sustain working the business all day and then moderating and hosting at night. Since COVID, I had no choice but to expand the team. We’ve been busier than ever and growing by the month. The growing pains were a hurdle but they’ve also been a blessing.”

While Varnado was already working on opening her virtual wine society, she said the pandemic forced her to push up the idea in order to stay afloat. Many establishments were closed, which has enhanced the society’s success.

“Now all of our chapter members across the country, no matter where they are, can meet and connect with each other,” she said. “It allows us a way to offer access to all the membership perks to women who wanted to join no matter where they live. Now anyone can join and that makes being a member even more exciting!”

Varnado said her goal was always to create a brand that focused on Black women since they were often left out from marketing and branding within larger companies–despite their affinity for wine.

“I wanted to create that experience, that space, and be a brand that is totally and solely focused on the Black woman,” she said. “I want her to feel special and valued as a wine lover and as a human being. I want her to know she is seen and I intend to continue creating and offering opportunities for her to grow, connect, and be celebrated.”