Released 22 April 2009
After a recent visit to her native Zimbabwe, University of Pennsylvania junior, Tariro Mupombwa felt compelled to do something to help those in the troubled country.
"I realized I had to contribute something positive to the society," Mupombwa said.
She decided to start a nonprofit business making infant clothing and school uniforms.
To help fund her project, which she calls "sewing a living - for the old, and the community at large", Mupombwa applied for a Projects for Peace grant from the Davis United World Scholars program at Middlebury College in Vermont, which awards grants up to $10,000 for deserving ideas and for support from the Global Development Initiative, a Penn program to promote international relations.
She has also collected 55 donated sewing machines here in Philadelphia. And now, with the help of The Salvation Army, is sending them to the Bumhudzo Old People's Home in Zimbabwe. The residents of the home will then be trained as tailors to create the clothing for more than 3,000 uniform-wearing students in the Salvation Army schools.
"It's really exciting to see it all falling into place," said Mupombwa, herself a Salvation Army school graduate, as the 55 machines were loaded into a Salvation Army truck for the first leg of their long journey.
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