Renew & Restart. Women’s entrepreneurship and creative recycling
NOVE created Renew & Restart to help reduce plastic pollution while simultaneously offering women in Kabul an opportunity for socioeconomic empowerment. Participants were selected based on vulnerability criteria such as household poverty, number of dependents, and the presence of malnourished children in the family. Personal motivation to start an independent business was also taken into account.
The 250 women involved in the project took part in hands-on courses covering creative recycling techniques and business training, followed by dedicated mentoring on marketing and sales.
The project focused on creating trinkets from recycled plastic materials, including beads resembling traditional glass ones. All the items produced contained more than 60% recycled plastic.
The women trained through Renew & Restart were eager to start selling even before the project ended: by selling the items made during training, they generated a combined revenue of over 220,000 AFN (approximately 3,000 euros). By the end of the mentoring phase, some participants had already launched small income-generating businesses based on creative recycling.
Renew & Restart is part of NOVE’s broader mission to promote women’s empowerment and economic resilience, promoting innovative and sustainable local development models capable of generating a positive impact for both communities and the environment.