Pikilily Report to Presidents Meeting, Australia 2024 – Claire Elsdon
Itʼs been another busy year at Pikilily in Mwanza. The video project is going well and there is a lot of interest and support from various regional road traffic and police offices as well as at ministerial level in Tanzania. We are now working proactively with Transaid who made the video with our Pikilily women, to push the video content across Tanzania and Kenya in particular, since the latter is a focus country for Transaid. Given that the videos are available in Hausa (a significant language in Nigeria) as well as Swahili, which is widely spoken across East and Central Africa, the potential reach impact is very significant. We are exploring some partnership routes to ensuring that the content, which is free to view and download via Youtube, gets into as many hands as possible.
In Tanzania itself, we have been really encouraged by the increasing noises from various public officials of the desire to promote MJ Piki (the local chapter of Pikilily) as a home- grown Tanzanian success story and example of female empowerment, which we take as a great sign of our project maturing and being adopted into the mainstream. Over time, our goal is to have these materials integrated into all road safety curriculums as a matter of course.
The magnificent auction led by Kathy OʼDonnell and Lee Skinner at the France Rally in 2023 raised over 800 euros. This paid for the training of another woman to join the MJ Piki team and contributed to the subtitling of the videos. One of the 8 video modules can be viewed here as a taster – this one is a 2-minute snippet on why wearing a helmet is valuable, as presented in Swahili by one of our women riders, Catherine. link: video
The ACE Cafe in London held a Womenʼs Day event in July this year. GB member Chrissie Langton organised a WIMA stand, which several members helped with, and between them they did brilliant work selling preloved kit and raising awareness of Pikilily and WIMA.
Our stand was also much enhanced by the new pop-up banner designed by Siân Davis, GB President. Over £170 was raised from this fantastic link up and connections made thanks to an impromptu visit from the fire-brigade. The community teams within the fire service as well as police in the UK are interested in the English language versions of the videos for potentially sharing in communities especially where generally younger riders sometimes opt not to wear helmets without much appreciation for the dangers, so this is an area that we will follow up on.
For the next 12 months, our main fundraising focus is now thinking about the bikes we currently have, which are still going strong (in some cases 8-9 years old) but I am mindful we will possibly start getting into bigger repairs soon or possibly replacements. It would be ideal to bolster our dedicated repairs pot to manage these increasing risks. We would like to have a Tsh3M pot set aside for this purpose (equivalent to around USD1,100) so any support we could secure in reaching this target would be very gratefully received and keep our riders on the road.
Last but by no means least, we have been absolutely delighted to host WIMA member Trui Hanoulle into our workshop in Mwanza earlier this year. Trui is developing an incredible photojournalism concept called Move She Does, celebrating pioneering women around the globe who are breaking stereotypes and challenging their status quo through the use of various types of vehicle. A profile of the MJ Piki women riders is to be featured in Truiʼs exhibition in Bruges in November this year, which looks to be a visually stunning and inspiring event!
To sum up, many thanks for all the many ways that WIMA has supported us again this year. We are all so touched by the kindness and support from so many of you. Hope to see you on the road sometime soon!
