One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of Gambia (Millbrook Picture Books)

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Isatou stood at the edge of the village and looked at the ugly heap of rubbish piled high on the red earth. Amongst the discarded tins, food and bike tyres, one thing stood out: there were plastic bags everywhere. Mosquitoes swarmed above murky puddles of water pooled on bags on the ground. Two of her neighbour’s goats perched on the rubbish, foraging for food. She shooed them away. Isatou had heard that many people’s goats had died recently. When the butcher cut them open, he had found plastic knotted in their stomachs. A young woman, Isatou discovers that plastic bags are being used more and more in her village- and being tossed aside, littering the ground.

She sees families, women, and children use plastic to light up charcoal stoves: “they and their kids were directly breathing those toxic fumes. I realized we had to change this.” Abusing the environment has obvious consequences: MISSION: To raise awareness for children’s books that celebrate diversity, and to get more of these books into classrooms and libraries. Mongabay Kids: What was the plastic bag pollution problem like in your community before you had the idea to recycle the bags into products like purses?

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Some people laughed at Isatou and her friends, telling them they were ‘dirty’ for digging around in the rubbish. Some men told her that her plans couldn’t work because she was a woman and too young to be a leader. But Isatou believed in what she was doing. She loved helping others and relished a challenge. In her family, everyone had always worked together to solve problems, and her mother had been a great inspiration to her. In the Gambia, many girls were unable to finish school because they were needed at home to help their mothers. Isatou wanted women to have the chance to learn skills and to earn money, even if they had not been given the chance to finish their education. One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia". www.publishersweekly.com . Retrieved 2019-11-01. One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia tells the inspiring story of five women who creatively dealt with their village’s plastic trash problem. Despite limited resources and ridicule, Isatou and her friends persevered for more than a decade, eventually realizing economic empowerment through their recycled plastic purse project. The book also includes bonus information such as a Wolof language glossary, timeline of actual events, and photos of the women of Njau. This is the first project to train people in reprocessing techniques across the waste streams,” explained Mike Webster, the project manager from the WasteAidUK initiative, which delivered its inaugural project with the livelihood NGO Concern Universal. “There are plenty of reprocessing projects that haven’t got off the ground because the technology is out of reach for most people. We have focused purposefully on entry-level systems that can be made locally, and the waste materials that are actually here, not a western perception of what should be recycled.“It was really important to partner with a local organisation with strong community links. This is as much about behaviour change and finding new ways of incentivising waste management. Our focus groups showed that even a tiny financial incentive can make for effective collection systems, people are really interested in learning how to make income from waste.”

And yet, Isatou persisted. Twenty-five years later, her photo is on display at the national museum in Kachikally and in popular city restaurants such as Smile Lounge in the touristy area known as Senegambia. Her story has been told in books and documentaries. Above all, WIG is not only still active, but it has also expanded into nearly every corner of Gambian society and is inspiring countless individuals and groups to find solutions to problems other than plastic waste. For 17 years, Isatou Ceesay has empowered women and contributed to one of the most important problems around the plastic waste. Isatou Ceesay (born 1972) is a Gambian activist and social entrepreneur, popularly referred to as the Queen of Recycling. [1] She initiated a recycling movement called One Plastic Bag in the Gambia. Through this movement, she educated women in The Gambia to recycle plastic waste into sellable products that earned them income. [2] [3] Early years and education [ edit ] When she passes by the pile of rubbish, she smiles because it is smaller now. She tells herself, one day it will be gone and my home will be beautiful. As a child, Ceesay was forced to drop out of school at a young age but that did not allow anything to stop her determination to keep growing and to keep learning from the surrounding environment and still dare to take action.She is very active and has worked for the US Peace Corps office in the Gambia, the Swedish organization Future in Our Hands, and as a consultant for development organizations. The recycling project, which began in 1998 in the midst of a lot of resistance still running and growing right now. Although Ceesay's focus has thus far been on Africa, she has the wider world in her sights. “Whatever country we are in, it is so important to spread the word,“ she says. “This is a big global problem, and by connecting with similar people across the world I believe we can together make a lot of changes to help the situation we are in – the sky's the limit.“