Who would have thought that working with rubbish could become so exciting? 9 years ago, 5 Ethiopian women, Kiros Wolde-Giorghis, Embafrash Berehie, Legawork Ayle, Tsehay Haile and Mulatua Haileselassie decided that Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia needed cleaning up, and that they would help do that whilst giving women a means of making a living. The plan was simple: pay unemployed women to collect the plastic waste that littered the city of Addis, and ensure that this waste gets recycled. And that’s how SOS Addis was born. From its genesis, the cooperative has prioritized working with the most marginalised women in Addis Ababa including elderly women, and women living with HIV/AIDS. Most of the members of the cooperatives have low education levels, and as the organization has grown, they have hired young women to manage their administration.

The business of collecting rubbish is no easy task. A hefty 132,000 kilograms of plastic waste has been collected by members of SOS Addis and delivered to a recycling plant. As we all know, one person’s rubbish has the potential to become something a lot more precious, and to capitalize on this potential SOS Addis trained 34 of its members to re-use plastic waste bags.

A priority for the group was to stop people from using the plastic waste bags that have become so commonplace. Towards this goal, the group launched a campaign to ban the importation of these bags. Extensive media outreach was embarked on; an annual walk through the principal streets of Addis Ababa commenced; and a tree-planting programme was instituted to take place every 4 years. Numerous environmental awareness workshops and anti plastic pollution campaigns supported this effort to ban the importation of plastic bags. The result? The group has been successful. In Ethiopia today, government Proclamation Number 513 bans the importation and manufacturing of plastic waste bags. Elenatane Getachew Fikre, the Executive Director of SOS Addis, is adamant that this change in national policy is due to the advocacy efforts of her group.

It is clear that SOS Addis has made a significant difference to sanitation in the city of Addis Ababa, whilst impacting government policy at a national level. What is even more impressive is that the Ethiopian government has rolled out the model of plastic waste collection implemented by SOS Addis Ethiopia, and there are now 90 cooperatives throughout the nation’s capital working on plastic waste collection.

These are the kind of groups that the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) specializes in funding. To date, SOS Addis has received US$45,000 in grants from AWDF. This funding has been essential in supporting the organization in its efforts to create a cleaner environment in Addis Ababa, creating decent jobs for some of the most marginalized women and establishing a model that now benefits all of Ethiopia through Proclamation Number 513.