Women leading the climate battle: Happy Itros Sanga and the Green Craft Academy

By Emilie Authier

Dar es Salaam, A recent World Bank study estimates that around 5,500 girls drop out of school each year in Tanzania, thus becoming a major economic and social issue nationally.

In response to this, and observing the impact of climate change on local Tanzanian communities, a young woman, Happy Itros Sanga, with strength and determination, founded her project: the Green Craft Academy, a Woman Dior 2023 and UNESCO Winning Project, which recently became a Tanzanian NGO.

The aim? Empowering Tanzanian girls and women by teaching them vocational skills in eco-business. Since its creation, the Green Craft Academy has been raising awareness on climate change issues and the girls who participate have gained confidence in knowing that they can still be in charge of their own destinies, and mentees have started self-employing themselves through the skills they gain there.

For instance, one woman, Lightness, is now a designer making cloths for her friends and family members.

Born in 1998 in Tanzania, Happy Itros Sanga studied Psychology at the University of Dar es Salaam and graduated in 2021.

Then, she followed her educational background by attending short courses on Climate Change issues such as “Climate Justice”, but also Gender Equality classes within the African Union International Centre for the Education of Girls and Women in Rwanda. This is when all her experiences in terms of climate change started.

As the Vice-President of Student’s Government, she was also part of one of ActionAid Young People’s Social Movement championing climate change in 2020, which gave her the opportunity to work firsthand with young people and women who were highly impacted by climate change.

While all of her associative experiences gradually led her towards the climate field from a gendered perspective, one event particularly marked her, thus reinforcing her project to act in this field.

 “In Kilwa, there is a village called Nijinjo, where, because of the floods in January 2020, a lot of people died and thousands were displaced. I could see people dropping out of school, young women trying to save their children and serve the families.

“So at that point I really wanted to start my own advocacy on climate change. Since then, I started to build the movement, focusing on work, and I have never looked back,” explained Happy.

In the beginning of 2022, Happy joined the Dior and UNESCO Mentorship Programme for Women Leadership and Sustainability.

Through that programme, she received intensive courses on how to create a project and sustainability. This is how she started the project and began to do the pilot study from her home in Kigamboni, relying on the support of people she knew to spread the word that she was organizing free workshops.

“The workshops in Kigamboni were more based on equipping girls with entrepreneurial mindset, such as where to start, how to start a business and why it’s important to interstate climate change in entrepreneurship. It started with only 5 girls in 2022, it was a pilot study,” explained Happy.

The Mentorship Programme required the creation of a viable project to help the community. 'With my associative experiences, and since I started organizing workshops, I observed three main issues: not many people have green skills, the unemployment rate was really high, especially for young people, and the rate of young girls dropping out of school was also very important. I tried to find a way to combine these three challenges, and this is how I ended up founding the Green Craft Academy,” she says.

Green Skills are a set of skills or knowledge that promote environmental sustainability. They can be integrated in business, in education, or even in daily life style with a goal of reducing the carbon footprint and conserving the environment.

“For the Green Craft Academy, we focus more on equipping on technical and creative part of Green skills through circular economy, such as recycling plastics into decorative materials, upcycling clothes, recycling hair etc,” explained Happy.

By helping women find employment, and supporting girls who have dropped out of school through these skills, Happy has successfully managed to address the three main challenges she identified before launching her project.

For all her efforts, in March 2023, Happy won the Dream for Change Award organized by UNESCO and Dior. Then, she took the very first cohort with 10 girls across different parts of Dar es Salaam.

Since this moment, the Green Craft Academy has continued to grow and develop, contributing to the empowerment of more and more women through eco-business. Happy’s target audience has also evolved, no longer focusing solely on girls who have dropped out of school.

There are now only two criteria to participate in these workshops: being from Dar es Salaam, due to capacity limits, and being a woman aged between 18 and 28. In 2024, 15 women are participating in the project. All of them are from very different backgrounds, some being at home, studying at university, having their own small business, while others have degrees but no job opportunity.

The Green Craft Academy can nowadays rely on a project assistant volunteer, a communication volunteer, and a professional eco-designer to enhance the Green Craft Academy’s development.

Happy also started receiving funds that allowed her to accelerate the growth of her project, the Woman Dior program’s funding being the main one at the moment.

'I also have a very good relationship with the Alliance Française and the French Embassy. Last year they appointed me the Ambassador of Alliance Française in Dar es Salaam, and they fully funded the Christmas Bazaar in 2023. It was a huge support to us,” she declared.

In August 2024, she attended a workshop which allows her to experience the spirit of solidarity, mutual support, kindness, and sisterhood that prevails among the women present. A group of about ten motivated women from different backgrounds gathered for this workshop on 'Combining Eco-Business and Sustainable Fashion Brand”.

After a fun card game to introduce themselves and feel more comfortable, the workshop mainly involves sharing ideas, brainstorming, each working on her own project, but with exchanges that enrich personal reflections.

Happy and Malkia Ulimboka, an eco-designer and Ully’s founder, share their knowledge through their experiences and provide the women with the tools they need.

These two passionate women also provide motivation, perseverance, and ongoing support.

'We have young women who want to recycle plastics, clothes, hair. It’s a place where they can explore all the possibilities. It’s a place where we really want to incubate all projects, to find a market, come up with ideas, and make sure that they monetize the ideas to tap into the right market, and be part of the climate action in Tanzania. We support each other,' explained Happy.

Thanks to this initiative, from last year, some women became designers, others started their own-businesses, and some girls have been employed, while some have started their own movement.

“But even after they finished, they still come back for support. There’s the Alumni Community to be sure that women can improve whenever,” precised the founder.

On her personal side, Happy was named as one of the TOP 100 inspiring young women in Tanzania as well as one of the 25 women in the world making impact in Climate Action, through Women For Change Initiative at CHANGENOW in France.

She is also invited to international conferences, such as Dior & UNESCO 2024 Global Conference in Paris in March 2024, as one of the speakers alongside the Vice President Corporate Social Responsibility at Dior, and the Director for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems at UNESCO.

But her determination doesn't stop there; in the coming years, Happy, still as motivated to help other women, aims to expand the Green Craft Academy beyond Dar es Salaam, and even beyond Tanzania!