Overcoming to Provide for Others: Ann & Faith's Story
Ann (left) and Faith (right) stand outside of the shop where Ann currently works
Having graduated in 2020, sisters Ann and Faith are recent Neema alumni. After graduating, they started operating their own successful tailoring shop in Kitale. Ann is still currently working there, but Faith just took a position at the Kitale Wool Shop as a local uniform maker.
After Ann heard about Neema, it was her mother who encouraged her and Faith to apply to the program. She felt that with drugs and behavioral problems being so common for young women in the area, her daughters were in need of redirection in life. One study showed that “49% of women surveyed in Kenya reported ever experiencing violence, and one in four has experienced violence in the past 12 months” (DHS Program). Ann and Faith’s mother knew that her girls were vulnerable, just like most young women in the area.
Through counseling and discipleship at Neema, Ann and Faith grew in character and are now both currently involved in the worship team at their church.
And from the skills training that Neema provides, they not only learned dressmaking, but also entrepreneurship, business skills, financial management, and social skills preparing them for life after Neema. “I came to Neema because I wanted to learn how to sew so I can depend on myself and help my family,” Faith says. “My dream is to have a big workshop and employ other girls who are like how I was. I want to help those who are not in school to do something.”
Before transitioning to the wool shop earlier this year, Faith said her favorite part of the day was “waking up … going to the shop [her and Ann’s shop], and having work to do there.” In her new position at the wool shop, she still has reliable work, but is also able to live with and care for her mother. Previously, the sisters would go home every other week (taking turns) and bring products to market because one of them had to be with their mother the whole week due to her sickness.
Although many of Ann’s customers are from the area where her mother lives, when she goes somewhere in public, she’ll introduce herself and share that she’s a tailor and makes dresses. That’s how she gets her orders. She says that one of the biggest challenges she faces is that “people want to either pay slowly for the product, pay in installments, or they bargain too much. So the price they give me to make the dress is not worth it. I won’t make a profit.”
But now that Faith works elsewhere, Ann is improving at handling customers. She used to rely on her sister but is now gaining personal experience in customer relations. Although her capital is small, Ann says that business is going well. And she is also teaching her other sister to sew which helps support Ann with business.
For Ann and Faith, hope was restored when they found emotional and spiritual healing as well as the opportunity to learn a skill to provide for themselves and their mother. But many other young women in rural Kenya are still facing the same struggles that make them vulnerable. Since Covid-19, “School closures, barriers to distance learning, economic insecurity, food insecurity, gender-based violence, and the health risks of COVID-19 have all increased adolescent girls’ concerns and feelings of hopelessness about their own educational futures.” (Brookings).
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