We’re pleased to report that feedback from projects continues to arrive via our online reporting system. It’s wonderful to know how your support for Workaid with tools or money is able to make such enormous differences in people’s lives. Here are a few glimpses.
Zambia:
The Chichetekelo Outreach Partners (featured in our Spring 2019 Newsletter) reported that female trainees have been empowered by learning skills they thought couldn’t be carried out by women. One participant, Susan Maleka, said “We thought it was impossible for a woman to weld. Now we have seen that it is very possible!”
Uganda:
Lydia from the Foundation for Women Development (FOWID-R) wrote:
The tools have empowered 60 young women and marginalised youths in skills development. The tools sent have enabled training and some have started up their own small-scale businesses and others have formed groups to do so.
Most families where trainees come from have been visited by our internal board members for monitoring since July 2018 to observe the changes so far achieved by the first 41 trainees.
According to Mr Muhindo Demaash, a carpenter who specialised in making sofa seats, “I have managed to take home food for lunch and supper on a daily basis and pay for a single room here in Kanyangeya village with money I raise from my work of making sofa seats. I acquired the skills from FOWID-R over the last six months. I am now a busy man contracted by individuals to make seats in people’s homes and other workshop managers also hire my labour on complicated fashions which fail them.”
Ms Masika Rose noted that “The training I obtained in sewing and garment cutting has supported me to begin a small business. Though I have only one sewing machine, my friends have started approaching me to train them. I have managed to pay for my two children’s school fees, buy their school materials and their food, even though I am a single mother.”
She carried on, “I have even joined two saving groups where I save on a weekly basis to help secure some small revolving loan, as I need to buy some clothes, which I can design for my customers for better prices. I am expecting to use the loan and I may buy another sewing machine to support me and make my work easier. All in all, I am better off than ever before I acquired training in tailoring.”
Some members, such as Bwambale Brian and Sunday Kisoro, of Rockland Foundation for Rural Development in Uganda have benefited from the carpentry training and have started making Top Bar Hives, which they are selling to beekeepers. Here’s a short video showing the group in action using Workaid tools.
We are all very grateful for your continued help and support!
