Gender Equality South Africa Project #28580

Support Women Learn a New Skill in South Africa

by Action Change (Formerly GVI Trust)

Project Report | Dec 3, 2024
Closing the Gender Gap in Africa

By Dorcas | Sewing Teacher

Hello Friends and Family

2024 Year-End Update: Empowering Women, Building Communities

As we wrap up 2024, we want to take a moment to celebrate the incredible strides we’ve made this year—thanks to your generous donations and ongoing support. It's been a year of growth, innovation, and deepening impact, and we’re excited to share our progress with you.

A New, More Impactful Program

Earlier this year, we were fortunate to welcome a group of business students from Ohio State University. Over the course of two weeks, they shadowed our program, collaborated with our teachers, and helped us refine our approach to better serve the needs of our community. The result? A revamped 6-week intensive training program, designed to provide our participants with deeper, hands-on learning experiences.

We also introduced a 200ZAR refundable joining deposit, which helps ensure greater commitment and reduces dropouts.

As a result of these improvements, we are now able to offer 10 new spaces every 8 weeks, increasing our capacity to 60 women per year. The program has gained tremendous popularity, and we already have over 200 people signed up to join in the future. It’s quickly becoming a central part of the township’s resources, empowering young women and girls who are unemployed, have dropped out of school, or are otherwise stuck at home with few opportunities.

Course Breakdown: A Clear Path to Success

Our 8-week course structure is designed to maximize learning and provide clear milestones for success:

6 Weeks of Intensive Learning: Participants are immersed in hands-on training, gaining the technical skills they need to create high-quality products such as school uniforms, African-inspired items, and other marketable goods.
1 Week of Examinations: At the end of the training period, students undergo a week of assessments to ensure they’ve mastered the skills taught throughout the program.
1 Week of Graduation: The final week is dedicated to celebrating the achievements of our graduates, where they present their work and are formally recognized for completing the program.

This structure allows us to maintain a high level of quality and commitment throughout the process, ensuring that women not only learn a trade but leave the program with tangible skills and opportunities to succeed.

A Growing, Thriving Program

We’re proud to report that graduates of the program are already making a significant impact. Many have started their own micro-businesses, creating and selling handmade products to tourists, while others have joined our nonprofit, where we manufacture school uniforms for local schools, produce African crafts for international markets, and offer sewing and bubbles workshops for the community.

These initiatives are not only providing women with a stable income but are also benefiting the wider community, creating a ripple effect of positive change.

Your Impact: Training, Grants, and Opportunity

Your donations are making all of this possible. They fund the 6-week training program, covering the cost of our center rental, materials, and teacher salaries. After graduation, $50 grants are provided to help women purchase materials and use our machines outside of class time to develop their businesses. For those joining our nonprofit, they earn a living wage per item produced, contributing to the sustainability and growth of our work.

None of this would be possible without your continued support. As we head into 2025, we are excited about the future and look forward to expanding the program even further. Thank you for being an integral part of our mission to empower women and transform lives.

Many Thanks for your continued support, if you haven't already have you considered a small monthly donation to our project? You can setup a recurring donation on GlobalGiving and this really is a huge way for us to ensure we can afford the basic running costs of this project monthly. Wishing you a lovely festive season and look forward to updating you again in the new year!

Thanks

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Aug 6, 2024
It's winter and things are a little wet

By Tyrone Bennett | CEO of Action Change

Our Women in Class

Hello to all our lovely supporters around the world!

Our Women Empowerment team have been running our new skills program in a struggling township for just over 2 years now and during winter it is hard to motivate people in the community so we decided to close up shop for 1 week and run some focus and feedback sessions to look at what we need to do to develop our program - it was very exciting and successful!

Our women that joined the program loved the content and the program and went from never sewing a thing to being able to make a t-shirt, shorts, bag, cushion and much more, they then joined the mentor program but struggled to setup their own business and this is a real struggle for them, after much discussion we came up the better solution is that i we have a local business associated to the charity graduates could work here to raise funds to setup themselves and get further skills and any profit from the business could be used to run the sewing school in the future so we become 100% sustainable!

we love this idea, our team have secured one local school uniform shop meaning we are the only supplier for their school and parents will come to our centre to purchase, we are looking to setup shop online, we will be running pop up shops towards the end of the year during season and we have some other really exciting ideas for the women.

However we need to double our space and take on the rent of a second room, purchase a few more machines, purchase materials to start the orders and on top of this with the current floods in Cape Town we also need to replace tables and chairs that got ruined in the floods, we have costed up the launch of this new phase and we are now actively fundraising $3,9985.25.

Everyone is committed and we are excited to launch our new program as soon as we raise the funds, what this space for our next exciting update!

Thank You

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Apr 3, 2024
A New Start for Us

By Tyrone Bennett | CEO / Program Lead

Women going from unemployed to Business Women

Hello!

This project is going to be a little different to the rest as we want to tell you about our new plans for the next steps of this project. While sewing is super important and we are training many women to sew, we feel it is not enough just to teach but we need to help them step up and create their own business.

We had initially thought that as this project is so amazing and different that a corporate somewhere around the world would have wanted to take this project on as part of their CSR strategy and also provide virtual mentors to our graduating women but this has not happened and it is not our style to sit and wait so here comes phase 2 of our project!

We have decided to set up a social enterprise business locally and the new model will be that 8 women join a 16 week program (Level 1) or an 8 week program (Level 2). Both programs will be taught 3 days a week in the morning, Level 1 will do 8 week learning followed by an examination and level 2 will do 4 weeks followed by an exam. Upon passing their exam 3-4 graduates will become course leaders and teach the next intake which makes this project sustainable and gives these women sewing and teaching experience and skills. The other 3-4 graduates will volunteer at the new social enterprise company where they will work on either making and selling school uniforms, running other training programs and/or making items for the business to sell. All funds from this will be re-invested back into the sewing project to cover rent, materials and other running costs and eventually raise enough funds so we can open a second centre in another local township.

After the 16 weeks they will become an employee of the social enterprise business where everything they make and sell a percentage will be given to them in a wage and a percentage will be put into a savings pot, this saving pot will stay there until the indviduals have enough to purchase their own sewing machine and materials so they can go at it alone, at this point they will leave us and setup their own business and our team will help them find customers.

This model we feel is going to change the way we work and take off the pressure for fundraising as well as also allow us to start putting donations and future profit into building more centres in other locations as well as setting up woodwork skill centres, catering skill centres and much more. It's a big plan and we are looking to kick off May 1st and funding permits. We will stage the implementation but we are confident on this new long term sustainable plan, we hope you will continue to be with us on this journey!

Thank You,

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