[Berlin, 26 November 2013] Breaking the Ice has launched a crowdfunding campaign for SHINE, a soap cooperative in northern Mozambique. Bestselling novelist Lisa St Aubin de Teran makes a personal appeal for the initial equipment and set-up of the soap cooperative run by seven women in Mossuril, near the former capital and UNESCO Heritage site, Ilha de Moçambique.

Breaking the Ice has teamed up with the Teran Foundation to realise an ambitious media project: The first "Soap opera about soap" focuses on the soap-cooperative SHINE to replicate the emerging model, to lobby for small enterprise and to have SHINE becoming a beacon for better hygiene, supporting the international advocacy towards "hand washing with soap". The result will be a pan-African brand in the creative commons - advocating for hygiene, women's empowerment and small enterprise.

The current fundraising is the start of the journey, in 2014 first pilot-filming is scheduled and by 2015 we hope to start broadcasting and distributing DVDs in Northern Mozambique.

About the partners

SHINE is the latest project of the CSO Breaking the Ice, that has previously organised the first peace expedition to Antarctica - with four Israelis and four Palestinians sailing to Antarctica to climb and name the "Mountain of Israeli-Palestinian Friendship" (2004) - as well as the "Journey of an Olive Tree" from Jerusalem to Libya (2006). An important part of the work of Breaking the Ice has been to produce larger than life documentaries with an emotional appeal for what has become a strong claim: "Better together".

The Teran foundation has run community projects in the north of Mozambique for nearly ten years and Lisa's memoir Mozambique Mysteries is based on her experience during the first years of setting-up the foundation. As it seems, good ideas sometimes happen in parallel, so when she was approached by some women asking for help with the soap cooperative, Breaking the Ice tuned into this with the idea of "A Soap about soap". Watch Lisa’s appeal to fund the cooperative’s first batch of soap: "Every little bit helps - and a little bit goes a long way in the north of Mozambique"

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