HERWITAwards 2023- Eve Zalwango, Redefining male dominated businesses.

Christine Mabel

Feb 27

Evelyn Zalwango is a carpenter and CEO of V Interiors limited a female-managed furniture manufacturing business. She has over ten years of experience working in different areas of carpentry, marketing, interior design, and community development through skilling. She is the founder of the Fundi Women Initiative which trains and supports Women that have survived human traffic early marriages and young mothers through skilling in carpentry and its value chain.

I started off a decade ago as a contractor with small projects as part-time work because I had a job. After realizing that I can be able to do carpentry for a living, I joined a company as a partner and I grew the business to 60 employees and we were internationally recognized as business. Later my partners exited, and I took on the company alone although I found another partner later on. After 2 years of partnership, we parted ways and then I started a new company with my sister. It's been 5 years of ups and downs now. We have grown to 35 employees with 50% female. We started a new initiative Fundi Women to bring other women into our industry.

After working with men and always being disrespected and minimized on the Job, my sister decided to start her own business-Fundi women to empower other women to join the industry and create a safe and decent workspace for women. Her efforts were also to bring gender equality in an industry that is male-dominated, economic empowerment for women and to create employment opportunities that are readily available in the market or start a business.

Fundi women is an initiative that empowers women to become builders to bring economic empowerment and gender equality in an industry that is male dominated. Fundi women was started based on the need to create a safer working space for women, with a gap that was faced in finding the right mentors and employees in the sector. After running the business for nearly five years and struggling to find the right people to work, we discovered that women were dedicated to working although the notion was that the industry was male-dominated. The program targets and works with marginalized and at risk, young girls and women focusing on those that have survived trafficking, school dropouts, and early teenage pregnancy.
With Fundi Women, our goal is to have 1000 women trained in 5 years. We have so far trained 60 women in the past 2 years and 10 of those women are working in other companies' others are working as a group and others have gone back to school to further their education due to the training we have received.

We also work with landmine victims and survivors in Kasese through a banana fiber project. This is a project we introduced to them to find work around their homes since most of them are amputees, but they can have income through the banana fiber project.