InGear - The Newsletter of P4P, Sewing Partners, Uganda

2018 Success Story from Uganda: Agnes Nakabuye

By Mathew Yawe
Fall 2018 InStitch


Agnes Nakabuye is a 38-year-old widow and single mother of 4. Our vocational project sponsored her 2 years of training in sewing, tailoring, and fashion design. At the end of her 2-year course, the project gave her at no cost a manual Singer sewing machine from Sewing Peace.

For her business, Agnes hired a space on the veranda in our town of Mityana for U.S. $5.40 per month. She earns daily U.S. $2 to $4 selling second-hand clothes, fitting and repairing clothes, and making school uniforms.

Agnes has managed to save money for renting the room where her family lives, for buying food and medication, and for paying school fees for three of her children. Her first-born is 18 years old in senior six; her second-born is 15 years old in senior four; her third-born is 13 years old in senior one; and the last born, 9 years old, dropped out of school in primary six because Agnes could not afford the school fees.

Agnes has several challenges, and several hopes and dreams for the future.

  • She would like to expand her business, so she would like to be able to afford more material for her tailoring.
  • She would like to be able to afford a better sewing machine: one that can work on tougher fabrics and that has overlocking capability.
  • She would like to be able to rent a shop where she can safely store her customers’ clothes and her sewing machine. As of now, every day she must carry the machine and her materials between her room and her space on the veranda!
  • Ideally, she would like to be able to afford her own property, where she could build a house, grow food, and start a poultry-farming project.

Besides running our training programs, the Mityana Open Troop Foundation has also set up a sewing-machine shop in Mityana Town where schools and tailors can buy high-quality sewing machines at reasonable prices. The profits from the shop help pay our instructors and shipping costs.

We extend our sincere thanks to Sewing Peace for providing the machines that we use in our training programs, that we provide to our graduates in starting their own businesses, and that we sell in our shop to make our organization successful.