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Tuendelee Mbele
*Translated from Kiswahili, means “We Continue Forward”
A project linking HIV/AIDS education with labour and human rights, globalization, women’s rights and violence against women in Nairobi, Kenya
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Tuendelee Mbele EPZ Workers Welfare is a registered self-help organization founded in 2004 by workers in Kenya’s Export Processing Zones (EPZ). Current and former workers in the Ruaraka Industrial Area, just north of Nairobi, saw the need for an organization to support workers to uplift the quality of their lives. It is a membership organization of garment workers who obtain their incomes through seasonal or permanent work in the sweatshop conditions within the factories in the EPZs. |
Tuendelee Mbele’s mission is to create a society with dignity and equality; one in which workers are free from poverty, gender discrimination and HIV/AIDS. Tuendelee Mbele proposes four areas of intervention: HIV/AIDS education, labour and human rights education, support to the HIV/AIDS affected and infected, and income-generating activities.
Together with the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, Tuendelee Mbele has trained a group of peer educators in human rights and labour rights. These educators are active in the factories and the community, and are supported in an ongoing way by the organization.
Maggie Ziegler and Phil Vernon of SOLID, recently in Kenya, were impressed by the commitment, vision and organizational capacity of the leaders of Tuendelee Mbele. SOLID is now supporting a project to raise the funds to train 35 HIV/AIDS peer educators who will operate in both the textile factories and the surrounding slum settlements. This important program will challenge the culture of secrecy and silence within the textile EPZs, helping to empower the women working there.
What are the Export Processing Zones?
| EPZs have been set up around the world to provide cheap labour to corporations. In Kenya’s zones, as in those of other countries, national labour standards are not enforced. In Kenya companies get a 10 year tax holiday, exemption from import/export tariffs and no restriction on foreign investment and ownership. When Kenya allowed EPZs in the textile industry, the home-grown textile industry collapsed and workers were forced to take jobs in the zone where conditions are horrendous: harder work, less pay, brutal quota systems, no sick care, no sick leave, no maternity leave, extensive sexual harassment. Workers know what time they begin in the morning, but not what time they end. |  |
Why an HIV/AIDS project in the EPZ?
- All illness is hidden and although everyone knows there are many HIV/AIDS sufferers, no one is public about this. The infected suffer terribly: sick workers desperate to keep their jobs often work until they collapse from illness or exhaustion. And the silence encourages the spread of the virus.
- Workers desperate to keep their jobs – and 70% of the workers are women – often are forced into sexual relations with supervisors and managers. Many of these men will abuse numerous women. The women are silent. The virus spreads.
- The textile industry is boom or bust. When orders are low there is no work and no pay. Wages in the boom times are less than a third of basic survival needs. Desperation often leads the women into sex trade work in an environment where little is understood about HIV/AIDS, spreading the virus.
- Surrounding the EPZs north of Nairobi are extensive informal settlements or slums where one-room shanties are the norm and run-down, five-storey concrete housing blocks are only affordable by dual-income households. In this area of extreme poverty, the both transmission and stigma are high.
Who is involved with Tuendelee Mbele?
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The three key coordinators are former union organizers who have been blacklisted from working in the zones. Judy Wangui, David Musungu and John Otieno are inspirational leaders who are deeply committed to the welfare of their community and they are experienced and capable organizers. |
How can I donate?
You can make a financial donation through SOLID. See How to Contribute. Include a note that your contribution is towards We Continue Forward.
How can I get involved?
To support Tuendelee Mbele’s HIV/AIDS education project contact Maggie Ziegler ( mziegler@saltspring.com ) or Phil Vernon ( pvernon@saltspring.com )
To learn about sweatshop conditions in textile factories around the globe, go to www.cleanclothes.org. Sign on for their urgent action campaign.
