By Clare Effiong | Founder, Esther's Aid and Rwanda Country Director
At Esther’s Aid our MISSION is to Love, Care, Train, and Empower.
The ongoing rescue, training and empowerment program at Esther's Aid for the victims of sex-trade and trafficking is gaining more momentum. Some of the young women are being employed. But about 90% have formed cooperatives with the help of Business Coaches, who provide additional training on marketing orientation and linkage to small microfinance institutions.
Again, the training at Esther's Aid in Pattern Design and Tie & Dye technique was geared towards upgrading their skills, which gives the women more opportunities to earn money and improve their economic status.
The women were given different workshops such as:
Tie & Dye ( Fabric Design) as a technical skill.
Entrepreneurship which included: goals setting and leadership skills, as well as, job creation.
Bible studies.
The overall objective of the training was to provide them with knowledge and skills for creating their own businesses, which in turn would help restore self-dignity and end the cycle of poverty.
Esther’s Aid hired Business Coaches to educate these women on how they can market their products, work with small microfinance institutions, and form their own lending groups to help each other.
At our viisit on 7th February 2018:
42 of them formed a group and they are working on their own now.
The production is continuous and sales of their product is improving.
A small number of them opted to secure jobs for themselves with the Chinese Garment Industry in Kigali.
In the photos below, they showed Esther’s Aid Country Director that the training provided to them was successful and has helped them to make money through the beautiful products that they created.
The fabrics that women made are Amazing! People can use it in making bags, sofa and bed covers, shirts and many more things.
Though the women have been working, they have some challenges - such as the following:
The working place is very small. They need space to expand their trade.
Good Fabrics & colors are still being imported to Rwanda, which increases expenses and reduces their profit margins.
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