We visited women in the surrounding farm areas in Kouga to establish if there is a need for women to be trained in Sewing and Entrepreneurship. Groups of Women got together to show us their projects and what they have been doing with donated items that they received. Although the women are creative, they do not have a lot of training in sewing, crafts, etc.
After talking to the women, they said that they will be so happy to be trained in sewing, crafts, knitting, etc. Although they have a lot of products that they have made, there are no markets or shops to sell their products.
We have successfully had our first pilot for The Butterfly Project, where we had a lot of ladies come to sew, and we made one of the products of Be Original. This was done in Partnership with One Village.
We had a successful training session for 16 Days of Activism. This campaign runs every year from 25 November – 10 December. This is when the Government focuses on people who are affected by GBV (Gender Based Violence). We had a training, mentoring and skills development session with women from the community who are directly or indirectly affected by GBV. We trained ladies in Sewing & Entrepreneurship, so that they will be able to know that there is hope for their situation. By teaching them a skill, we want to bring hope to these women, so that they can see that staying in abusive relationships is not their only option.
Training:
Partners that partnered with us:
We trained 14 ladies from the community. We asked people to donate machines and fabric in order for us to teach the ladies to sew. Unfortunately the machines were not good quality and we had to find money in the middle of the week to be able to be able to have the machines serviced.
The ladies were nominated through the various projects in the community:
