Wonderbag creator receives St Anne's Old Girls Award of Excellence

On 2 June 2017, the St Anne’s Old Girls’ Guild awarded Sarah Collins (1987, Usherwood) with The Award of Excellence for her incredible journey empowering impoverished women with the Wonderbag.

 

In 2008, during the rolling blackouts that gripped South Africa, Sarah had an idea. She had found her destiny and was about to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of women across impoverished areas of Africa.

 

The next day, Sarah created the prototype for her heat-retention cooker, the Wonderbag. After food is brought to a boil, the pot is placed in the heavily-lined bag where it slow-cooks for up to 8 hours. "Finding firewood for cooking takes a huge amount of rural women's time," explains Sarah, "and gathering it is very dangerous. The wood fires used to cook then cause indoor pollution, a leading cause of death worldwide in children under five. Having the Wonderbag would empower the women to feed their families, generate an income, and save them time."

The Wonderbag eases the impact of health, social, economic and environmental problems facing Africa and developing countries. It enhances people’s quality of life by reducing time spent cooking. This small home business has expanded into a global social impact business. It is a dual model company with The Wonderbag Foundation focused on distributing bags to the poor. The busy Wonderbag factories produce hundreds of Wonderbags daily and a percentage of the proceeds from each Wonderbag purchased around the world are donated to the Foundation, helping them distribute Wonderbags to poverty-stricken communities.

 

Sarah's new goal is to sell 100 million Wonderbags to people worldwide. With the sales of these Wonderbags, the Foundation is committed to programs that continue to support the donation of bags to families in need which will act as catalysts for change!