Proflight Zambia Launches Youth Day Savings Initiative

LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – Lusaka-based regional airline Proflight Zambia has teamed up with paper technology charity APTERS to encourage young people to develop a money saving ethic, and help disabled children in the process. The Youth Day initiative will see APTERS – short for Appropriate Paper Technology – create 60 hand-crafted “piggy banks” in the shape of Proflight-branded aeroplanes that will be given to children on the airline’s flights this week. And the proceeds paid by Proflight will be used by APTERS to help subsidise the cost of the mobility aids they make for children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities.

 

“The team at APTERS is doing fantastic work to support less fortunate children and their families and so it was a natural choice for Proflight Zambia to engage them to make these Youth Day gifts,” said Proflight Director of Government and Industry Affairs Capt. Philip Lemba. “The idea is to treble our positive impact: giving children with cerebral palsy a new future, giving APTERS the funding they need for job creation, and giving our younger passengers a fun way to save money. Everyone wins.” Colourful piggy banks have a long history of encouraging children to save money by putting notes and coins in a slot where they are then kept safe until a target amount has been collected and can then be used to buy something special that the child has been saving up for, thus teaching them the value of money and instilling a savings habit.

 

Appropriate Paper Technology is based at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) and was

established in 1990 by three young enterprising and skilled physically challenged people with the aim of producing mobility aids for disabled children using recycled paper as the raw material. The organisation also uses the same technology to make commercial products such as dustbins, file boxes, toys, trays – and now piggy banks – to fund the collection of paper and support its activities. “Most of the mothers of our children with cerebral palsy are not able to pay the full amount for mobility aids. With the help of Proflight Zambia we can top that up so they are ore affordable,” explained APTERS director Kenneth Habaalu, as he showed Proflight sales supervisor Zamiwe Nyemba and Proflight receptionist Louise Bandela around the APTERS workshop where the Proflight piggy banks were being made by production supervisor Darius Banda, technician Peter Banda and assistant Irene Nasolo.

 

The team use balloons as a framework, on which they paste pieces of paper soaked in flour-and-water glue. Once dry, wings are added, the models are painted, and a slot cut in the top.