Category Archives: Kenya

InGear - The Newsletter of P4P, Kenya, Sewing Partners

Report from Kenya, Fall 2018

By Tom Ademba
Fall 2018 InStitch

[In March 2018 Sewing Peace made its first shipment to Aid the Needy in Homa Bay, located on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria in Western Kenya. The shipment of 72 sewing machines arrived in June. It was funded in part by the William and Helen Mazer Foundation of New Jersey.]


One of the beneficiaries of our first SP project in Kenya is a group called the Maseno Deaf Project. This is an organization of deaf people in Western Kenya running small businesses. They requested Aid The Needy to support them with a few sewing machines. They are making school uniforms, and designing various household garments that they sell to support their families. The group has 36 members working towards economic development.

Another Aid the Needy project is at the Atela Secondary School, where they use sewing machines in their Home Science classes. Atela Secondary School is a rural institution supporting education of young people from the smallholder farming communities in Rachuonyo District, Homa Bay County, Kenya. The school has a Home Science curriculum where sewing machines are a critical part of the syllabus. They now have good machines that support their classes.

Mother Teresia Van Miert, in Oyugis town, is a school run by the Franciscan Sisters supporting education of young children. The School has more than 300 children. By regulation, the school children must have uniforms. With SP sewing machines they are able to produce the uniforms within the school and make them affordable to the parents.

Luke is a cobbler who repairs shoes and bags, including lots of school bags. He also designs footwear from car tires. He does it so well that with only a few tools he earns good money. He purchased one machine that can run both manually and electrically. He operates under a shade tree in Oyugis Town, Homa Bay County, Kenya.

Kenya, Sewing Partners

Note from Kenya, 21 June 2018

Hello David,


Kind greetings. This is to inform you that today the machines arrived at our project site. Thank you very much.

It took some time as the port was congested. Also the lack of preshipment inspection cost some delays.

Otherwise the machines are of great quality and excitement is all over the community with this great support.

I hereby send today’s reception images as we wait to embark on our program and our reporting on it.

Pass our sincere appreciation for the hands and sweat that went into this magnificent work. We are humbled.

Tom Ademba
Aid the Needy
Kenya

Kenya, Sewing Partners

New Partner in Kenya: Aid the Needy

By Tom Ademba
Spring 2018

Aid the Needy is a community-based organization registered by the Ministry of Social Services operating in Rachuonyo South Sub-County, Homa-Bay County in Kenya. It was started in 2007 through initiatives of local young people to spearhead development among unemployed young people. The organization has transformed lives through sustainable small-scale self-help initiatives. To help young people start their own businesses, we give them vocational skills, including training in sewing, masonry, and carpentry.

Vision: A community where all are empowered to prosper and lead dignified lives through self-help initiatives.

Objectives:

  1. To build, equip, and manage a community training centre for young, underprivileged community members to acquire vocational training.
  2. To train and educate young people out of school, with a special focus on young women, in skills that would enable them to be self reliant.
  3. To improve the quality of life in the poverty-stricken villages, taking into consideration the cultural context and issues that hinder women from realizing their economic power and potential.
  4. To stimulate and strengthen community groups, to help them develop income-generating activities, and to enable them to fight stigma and prejudice.



Some of our achievements:

  • Since inception, the organization has trained many young people, including disabled youths, in vocational skills and enabled them to start their own businesses.

  • With funds from Aidlink Ireland, we launched a micro-enterprise project to support small-scale farmers.
  • We received funding from World Mercy Fund Austria to educate young farmers on the agricultural value-added chain so they can earn more income.

  • We have recently approached Pedals for Progress to support our community with sewing machines. P4P shipped 72 electric sewing machines to support our training programs and help young people start income-generating projects.

We are grateful to all our partners and in this year we pay our sincere gratitude to Pedals For Progress for the way they fast-tracked the shipment of the sewing machines to support our community project.

P4P thanks the William and Helen Mazer foundation for their continued support and interest in the development of East Africa and for aiding in the cost of shipping 72 sewing machines to Kenya.

Update: the machines arrived in Kenya on 21 June 2018. Here is a note from Tom Ademba.

Kenya, Sewing Partners

Sewing in Kenya

Summer 2017 InStitch

Cherehani Africa provides sewing machines to women in rural Kenya to enable them to start and run their own independent tailoring businesses.  Lillian Onyango lives and works in Madiany market, Siaya County. Lillian has four children, three of whom go to school. Lillian learned dress-making skills at Ruma Training Institute in 2010 but has been unable to afford to purchase her own sewing machine to enable her to start her own tailoring business. For the last seven years Lilian has been leasing a sewing machine to enable her to generate income and provide for her children.

She pays a monthly leasing fee of $5, and this fee reduced her profits and chances of ever owning her own machine. When Cherehani Africa met Lilian and told her about our partnership with Sewing Peace that will enable her and many more women in rural Siaya to acquire sewing machines, she was overwhelmed with joy. For her, the sewing machine she has received from Sewing Peace is the first production tool she owns in her own name. Lilian made a down payment of $40 for the sewing machine and committed to completing the deficit of $20 in two months. Lilian no longer has to lease a sewing machine and is able to take home more money to support her family. Through the partnership of Cherehani Africa and Sewing Peace, Lillian no longer has to worry about leasing a tool she depends on for her survival. All her energy and savings are now directed at completing the payment for the sewing machine. “Thank you Sewing Peace for enabling me to own a sewing machine. I will work very hard to ensure that you can extend your support to many more women like me in Kenya,” says Lilian.

Hello David,

The total cost for the machine is $60, which most beneficiaries pay off in six monthly installments of $10. All the machines that we received were in merchantable condition and we have not had to repair any before issuing. We broadly put the machines into two categories: those that could be converted to manual ($60) and those that are strictly electrical ($80). The ones that could be converted to manual have been widely issued as most beneficiaries work in stations without electricity. The electric ones have moved slower because they are more suitable for urban centers.

Best Regards,

Robert Mboya