Nantongo earns a living from pumpkin snack
The snack has helped her earn a living, employ people and also drop the restaurant business she was operating.
Sometimes, it simply takes one person to challenge us to do something different in order to reach the next level.
This is what happened to Catherine Nantongo Thatcher who used to operate a restaurant in Bukuto when she started a pumpkin snack after a customer requested her to make something out of her menu.
The snack has helped her earn a living, employ people and also drop the restaurant business she was operating.
Starting out
" As part of my chores, I could bake bread," she says, "one day a customer asked if I could make one without wheat.
"I used pumpkin powder. The bread turned out wet. My mother -in- law, Mary Thatcher then gave me a fruit dehydrator, which dried the bread. I served it to friends and relatives.
"Some feedback was bad and some of it was good. Where it was bad, I strived to improve it.
"One day, my aunt bought the bread and left it in her bag instead of eating it, she put it in her porridge and it tasted nice.
"That is when an idea of making a snack instead of bread cracked in my mind."
What she uses
Instead of wheat, Nantongo a former Economics graduate of University of Texas, U.S.A uses pumpkin when making the snack.
She mixes cinnamon, pumpkin, bananas, coconut oil and dates in the snack. And instead of sugar, she uses bananas or mangoes as a sweetener.
She employs five workers on a permanent basis and every week, she is sure to sell 20 packets and some random orders.
A pack of a snack costs sh16, 000.
Advice for youth
A former financial analyst in Harare, Zimbabwe and a co-operate trainer in China for ten years, Nantongo advises young people to put away what they studied in school and look deep inside their heart and see what they can do.
"Creativity helps the nation by providing employment for others youths hence building up the nation's economy," she states.