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Get to know your new and young African “superheroes”

Thursday 15 November 2018
Do you need superpowers to become a superhero? No! But you do need to be smart, innovative, creative, courageous and passionate. With those traits you could end up “excited” as the 10-year-old Uviwe Bubu, who was announced as the winner of Social Helper Award (aka the Blossom Award) at the PowerPuff Girls Awards on Tuesday. The young girl from Cape Town runs her Mini Sparkles sanitary towels project with the help of her family.
 
Uviwe was motivated by the fact that millions of girls in South Africa miss up to a week of school every month because of the lack of proper sanitary care, and her desire to decrease absenteeism for young girls in school. She was able to collect enough sanitary towels to donate to disadvantaged girls in grades five to seven at Dunoon Primary School as well as the grade 10’s at Inkwenkezi High School in the Danoon Township. Uviwe and her team aim to supply enough sanitary products for a full year and to create jobs for their community in the supply of sanitary products.
 
Her counterpart from Zambia Mwangala Maunga, won the Science and Tech Inventor Award aka the Buttercup Award.  The 12-year-old created a solar water purifier to provide clean water to both rural and urban areas. Mwangala uses a clever combination of wooden or metal sheet enclosures, black paint for insulation, heat absorbent black trays, reflective materials, sheets of glass, glue and catch troughs to create her purifiers.
 
“I feel like I am on top of the world, because now I know that the future, the next generation that is coming is definitely female.” says Mwangala.
 
Nigeria’s Daniella Soje won the Artistic Creator Award aka the Bubbles Award, for her creative work. The 11-year-old has championed the conversion of turning every day trash into beautiful works of art and through her project, Trash to Art, and is set to empower over 100 kids and teenagers in Lagos Mainland by equipping them with the skills that will enable them to become financially independent, while motivating them to care for their environment.
 
Daniella encourages other young girls to “always believe in themselves and never let anyone kill their dreams”.
 
The girls will each receive more than R20 000 and mentors to help them improve their award-winning entry. Uviwe is mentored by Save the Children South Africa’s very own child ambassador Stacey Fru. The 11-year-old Stacey and has already written three books and is said to be Africa’s youngest published author.
 
Award winning musician and Africa’s very own PowerPuff Girl Toya Delazy praised Save the Children’s role in the discovery of these super-cute and super-fierce girls saying “this wouldn’t have happened without the help of Save the Children South Africa.”
 
“Working with Turner to deliver the PPG Awards has been an awakening experience for us. Thousands of entries from across Africa indicate not only the thirst for recognition of young girls, but more importantly, that they already have the answers and solutions to problems they face, they just need the platform to express them,” says SCSA’s Partnerships Manager Dianne McAlpine.
 
She hopes initiatives like this will continue to uplift young girls across Africa.
 
ENDS
 
About: Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In South Africa and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.
 
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