Virginia Mupanduki

All African Bazaar reports on the work of awardwinning Virginia Mupanduki, she "...is building up a broad national organization consisting exclusively of previously illiterate women and using the power of that organization to eradicate illiteracy, teach skills development, and create a political voice for them.Virginia Mupanduki has used her previous union experience to read the political climate of Zimbabwe, where, through her powerful organizing elements, she is giving a political voice to women without money or literacy. By combining literacy training and women's empowerment, she encourages their emergence as a new political and economic base, and she is persuading the government that the women represent a constituency that has been ignored and needs to be recognized. Virginia's "bottom-up" approach empowers women to do for themselves, thereby destroying poverty via literacy, even when government has tried and failed. Her project is thus likely to have a higher rate of success than that of adult literacy programs sponsored by the government. Her work is sustainable not only because once obtained, literacy is permanent, but also because it is rooted in the targeted communities..."