Eddy's Good News: The continued innovation of Valerie Labi and the Style Her Empowered organisation

Virgin Radio

13 Aug 2024, 13:15

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio Anthems, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 2pm and 6pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Tuesday 13th August 2024

I’d just started Live Drive in January when I told you about an inspiring British born Ghanaian woman, who’d moved back to Ghana and was helping clean up one of the most air polluted cities in the world, Accra, with specially designed electric bikes, made from recycled batteries and parts.

Say hello to Valerie Labi and her Wahu! Bikes that have now sold so well, she’s tripled her output, driven down the cost of insurance, and attracted funding to unleash Africa’s first native 4-wheeled electric vehicle.

There are now hundreds of delivery bikers with Wahu! Bikes, sparing the city from any pollution while they zip around dusty streets on their fat tyres. The bikes are sold under an affordable payment plan of around £18 per month for 18-24 months. They cost around just over a tenner per month in electricity to charge, a huge drop from the nearly 200 quid per month in petrol they used to have to cough up, while coughing because of the pollution too. Investors love her ideas and ethos so much that Valerie now has over £6.2 million to build a new factory and start producing electric vehicles, that are, just like their robust and durable bikes, especially designed for African roads.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

An American woman is empowering women in some of the poorest countries in the world to make money as seamstresses and giving their children a chance to stay in school. 

In the poorest countries in Africa loads of children are taken out of school for the simple reason that their parents can’t afford the uniform. Once they grow out of it, that’s it. They get shamed out of school. 

So Peyton McGriff started a non profit organisation that gets women out of often abusive situations and pays them almost double the minimum wage to make clothes for school kids, but clothes with a big difference. They grow with the student. Cleverly designed, with hidden folds that can be unravelled when needed, these clothes can take a child up six sizes. 

Style Her Empowered, or SHE now has two factories and a go fund me page that raises money for scholarships to take 500 girls at a time right through their education.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org