The Advocacy Project (AP) is seeking $3,000 to help 25 women entrepreneurs in Kenya to describe their experience of COVID through embroidery, and produce embroidery for sale. This will provide the women with an artistic outlet, a skill, a sense of community, an income, and a way to share their stories with a global audience. Working with their organization, the Kangemi self-help group, we will use donations to support embroidery training and purchase materials for this exciting 2-phase program.
Caren (photo) is a single mother of two boys. She also takes care of parents who struggle with chronic illness - and does it all on a limited income. Caren lives in Kangemi, one of Kenya's largest informal settlements. The pandemic has been harsh on Caren's family, but Caren is also a talented artist, manager and community organizer. Like many women in Kangemi, she is looking for an outlet for her skills that can bring in a steady income and offer her a chance to meet regularly with friends.
Caren's team envisions a 2-phased program. First, they will use embroidery to describe how the pandemic has affected them and their families. Phase 2 will help them to use their stitching skills to produce embroidered animal squares that will be brought to the US, assembled into bags and sold. We are confident that this year of productivity and artistry will be therapeutic for the artists and put their organization in a good position to play a role in Kangemi's recovery.
By supporting these 25 women and their association, your donations will have a profound long-term impact on the women and their community. By the end of 2021 we expect to see Caren's self-help group firmly established and well on the way to launching an embroidery micro-enterprise. Thus strengthened, the group could also play a role in empowering women generally and helping Kangemi to emerge from the pandemic. This would offer an important model for urban settlements everywhere in Africa.
