Today we’d like to introduce you to Tina Bader.
Tina, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
During Covid, our family got stuck in Bellville as we were traveling around the world from our home in Zambia. My husband’s family has been in Bellville for 6 generations, and his parents housed us during the madness of that moment. When we managed to return to our home and hotel (Royal Chundu) in Zambia, the entire global travel and tourism business had come to a grinding halt. Our lodge manager, Aggie Banda, and I sat down and decided to open an online marketplace for our rural Zambian communities’ goods as without tourists coming to our lodge; all our makers couldn’t earn a living. So, in June 2020, Zambezi Joy Society was born. In Aug 2021, we decided to move to Bellville and put our boys into school here. We then opened Zambezi Joy Society in the USA too, so the business has two legs: one in Zambia and one in the USA. Logistically, shipping was easier to fulfill from the USA. We dispatched all orders from our laundry room at home! In Dec 2021, we moved our business into a space on the town square, and as of today, we ship our goods and services to over 35 countries around the world from Bellville, Texas!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Nothing has been as big a challenge as COVID’s devastation on travel and tourism, so our primary business struggle for the past 3 years makes everything else seem bright and breezy!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Zambezi Joy Society has been set up so that as much profit feeds back to the our local Zambian community as possible. We are most proud of that focus. Having a space in the middle of small-town Texas that is filled with the bright, brilliant, and bold colours of our Zambian fabrics (called chitenge) and craftwork sets our souls on fire too! Our aim was to spread #chitengecheer during the dark days of Covid, and goodness knows we have definitely spread that cheer!
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Aggie is from a small village in Zambia and grew up with extremely humble beginnings. She is a force to be reckoned with and can be found either bossing up the lodge in Zambia, getting all of our makers busy making, or smiling her way through some of the Market Days in Bellville! She is also responsible for online classes that she performs through Zambezi Joy which she does for major corporations (Google, Facebook, Netflix, to name a few). Last year, Google flew her out from Zambia to be their keynote speaker at their Women’s Empowerment Conference in San Diego, USA and she ended the year being crowned RELAIS & Chateaux’s global Woman of the Year for 2023! I am proudly and quietly Aggie’s sidekick!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.zambezijoysociety.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zambezijoysociety
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zambezijoysociety
- Other: www.royalChundu.com
