- Livelihood Training For Women
- Uncovering Senegal’s Invisible Pollution Problem
Last year, Blacksmith returned to Senegal to conduct livelihood training for women so that they will not have to go back to the deadly job of backyard battery recycling in order to sustain their families. In 2009, over 32 children in Senegal died from lead poisoning caused by the activity.
Also, for the first time, Blacksmith began identifying and documenting polluted communities in Senegal.
“Unfortunately, pollution is often invisible until a tragedy strikes. Before the outbreak, there was little understanding of the problem of toxic pollution in Senegal. That is why identifying and assessing polluted sites is key. If you don’t count them, in a sense they don’t seem to exist,” says Kira Traore, Blacksmith’s program director for Africa.
In 2013, Blacksmith identified, assessed and added 103 hotspots in Africa to our database of polluted places, bringing the number of sites we have documented in Africa to 655.