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My name is Kaoru, a JOCV member, and have another name, Sethunya, represents "flower" in Setswana.

I work for Boteti Sub-District Office in Letlhakane as a Community Development Officer on a two-year volunteer work in Botswana. I have taken a two-year leave from my job in Japan in a local government.

My main job here is to support local people especially women with ways of income generation through handcrafting. During my first year (2019), I visited four villages, Xere, Mopipi, Mokobaxane, and Rakops besides Letlhakane and provided advice to local people to develop and improve their handcrafts like pouches, drawstring bags, accessories, and woven baskets as souvenirs mainly for foreign tourists. Through these activities, my experience to develop local natural products and their promotion activities in Japan are so useful.

Handcraft production in Xere

Accessories and pouches made from "Mateisi"

Drawstring bags

Traditional woven baskets

For developing a market, I visited some tourist destinations like Kasane and Maun where I sold the souvenirs to tourists and local people and I also joined annual Botswana Consumer Fair to promote and sell the products.

Sub-District stall at the Botswana Consumer Fair

Handcrafts at the Botswana Consumer Fair

Throughout our activities, I could see the change in the women and local people's attitude. As their products were becoming popular and selling out, the women started to become ambitious about their products and thus explored and proposed new product ideas to meet the desires and demand of their clients.. Through their determination and positive attitude towards improving their lives through the skills I have shared with them, I am very happy and proud of our collaborations. This is very rewarding for me.

Therefore in my second year of volunteering (2020), I would like my colleagues in Boteti Sub-District Office to take over what I taught them in the first year positively. My objective is to set up a system where the local people are able to do the whole process by themselves, from making the crafts to selling them at different markets so they can gain confidence and be independent.

Next time I will introduce and feature one of local craft makers.