From the Final Grant Report
“Our project is to equip girls with skills, abilities, and knowledge through sewing training and equipment, and to enable them to generate income for sustaining their essential needs, including clothing, and thus protecting themselves from various crimes and imprisonment. The beneficiaries of our project are a group of girls whom society has left out and left behind.”
This grant has brought a very positive change to our community, including the community being very happy for girls to get the necessary knowledge to sew their own clothes and for other people in the community to earn a living. There has also been an awareness of the community to bring their female children to the sewing class, regardless of religion or sect; this has brought more closeness between Christian and Muslim girls. The goal is to serve 1,876 girls and until now directly and indirectly we have served 689 girls and other people, and the number is increasing as the girls graduate.
Tell us what some of the response to the program has been.
Parent Madam Husna: My daughter completed secondary school education; after that I brought her to this class, and she learned how to sew. When she graduated, she came back home, and we bought her a sewing machine. Now she is actually sewing; she is sewing various maternity clothes. We are really thankful to God that she gets money to help herself in her life. We are really grateful to you.
Diocesan Vicar General: We used to worry a lot in the past about how to help our Christian daughters, how they can go from poverty to power, but through the UTO organization showing interest in being able to help our daughters by helping the issue of sewing class, students have graduated in the parishes; they have been a great help. The mothers of UWAKI (mothers’ union) were struggling with how to sew their uniforms, but now through their daughters who have graduated, they have been a help by sewing them and at a cheap price, but they also get money to support themselves in their living.
And recently, during the visit of the diocesan bishop for confirmation services, we visited many parishes where we have met the daughters who are working, and their lives seem to be going well. The mothers who have been helped to sew are enjoying the class very much, so let’s continue to thank them for the way they helped us. Running that class for us in the environment we have, it would be not easy to get a large number of our daughters who have graduated, and as I speak, they are enjoying taking the course, and I believe that if they graduate, they will be able to work well. So it is actually a very good class; she has her knowledge, and when she goes there, she looks at the place where there is a need for that service. She goes and sets up, opens her work station, sets up her sewing machine and starts the work of sewing for people’s garments.
Diocesan UTO Coordinator: What can you say or what message do you have for the UTO organization in partnership with the diocese?
Diocesan Vicar General: First of all, thank you, but also don’t get tired of continuing to show your love to our diocese. There is still an opportunity to help many other girls get more knowledge. It is a great blessing for them, because what they give is not for nothing as it touches people of low status and to be able to free oneself in the economic situation.