Over 1,000 women learn to make oil, soap, lotion and flour

ABOUT 1,200 women at Bumayong in Lae, Morobe, have undergone two weeks of life skills training facilitated by Aim Niugini Community Skills and Service (ANCSS).
The training aims to empower women with skills in producing useful and valuable products to sell to support their families.
The women were taught how to make virgin coconut oil, herbal oil, soap production, shampoo, lotion, peanut butter, flour, bio fuel, pot cleaners and bricks.
Founder and facilitator Simon Samuel has been running the community skills and service for 17 years throughout Papua New Guinea with a focus on promoting homemade PNG products.
He said promoting locally made products would strengthen the country’s local economies.
“The way forward for the country is only through downstream processing,” Samuel said.
“In life you can come up with anything, knowledge is there, everyone has that knowledge but the thing that is missing is skills.”
Samuel also acknowledged Bank South Pacific for educating the women on financial literacy.