Help GBV Survivors in Uganda Learn to Tailor

This report is going to 18 friends who have donated $2,478 to help Women in Action for Women (WAW) launch a tailoring business in Gulu Town, Uganda. Thank you!

We were last in touch with you earlier in the year when we shared the tragic news that Mary, a founding member of WAW, had unexpectedly passed away with one of her sons. While Mary is not forgotten – far from it – things have improved dramatically for her WAW friends this year. We want to share some of the good news in this report.

2020 to 2024: stitching stories of captivity, COVID and butterflies

First, some context

The founding members of WAW were all kidnapped during their teens by rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which terrorized Northern Uganda between 1987 and 2005. The women were forced into marriage and pregnancy and spent several harrowing years before they were able to escape.

Since 2020, with help from The Advocacy Project, they have used stitching and embroidery to help them rebuild their confidence, learn new skills, and earn some money.

They began stitching in 2020, when they described the story of their captivity through embroidery for the Ugandan War Survivors Quilt. The same year they also designed quirky blocks for a new quilt about African breads. Their next stitching project came in 2022 when they produced ten stories about the devastating impact of COVID in Northern Uganda for our COVID story-telling project.

By 2023 the WAW artists were keen to turn their stitching skills into a source of income. In response, we commissioned embroidered butterflies from each of the ten artists and printed their designs onto tea towels which we then offered for sale through our online store. The towels continue to sell and have brought in just over $5,000 up to now.

2024 to 2025: Sister Artists

The WAW butterflies were so spectacular that in 2024 we commissioned over a hundred more butterfly blocks from WAW for a new Sister Artists quilt challenge.

As some of you may know, Sister Artists helps fiber artists in Africa and North America to collaborate in making art quilts, which are then exhibited and auctioned. The blocks are stitched in Africa and turned into art quilts by expert quilters in the North. Profits from the sales go back to the artists in Africa.

The WAW artists produced a huge swarm of embroidered butterflies which we dispatched to 37 quilters in the US, Canada and Kenya, and by this spring we were in possession of these 37 splendid quilts. 

There then followed a flurry of activity over the early summer!

First came a splendid exhibition in late May at the prestigious George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum in Washington DC. Click here to see photos of the exhibition, and open our online collage of the quilts.

Next, came the human connection. The day after the exhibition closed, we organized a Zoom meeting between four of the Ugandan artists and several quilters here in Washington. Our Ugandan friends were flabbergasted to see how their embroidery had been turned into such gorgeous artefacts!

Then came the auction. Using the online platform betterworld, we raised just over $7,000 from the sale of the quilts.

Finally, the Sister Artists project produced an 89-page companion catalogue, which can be purchased for $25 by emailing dcoffice@advocacynet.org.

August 2025: in Uganda

While all of this was going on in the US, the WAW team in Uganda was preparing to put the money to good use and realize Mary's dream of launching a tailloring business.

This would require some sort organization, and WAW requested the services of a student Peace Fellow. We selected Aaron, a US Army veteran and graduate student at Texas A&M University.

Aaron spent ten busy weeks in Gulu Town, providing technical support to WAW and the Gulu Disabled Persons Union (GDPU), another AP partner. It was dramatically different from anything he had experienced as a soldier! One moment he found himself attending trainings to help girl students avoid malaria. The next he was helping the WAW team to purchase 9 sewing machines (Top photo).

Aaron took it all in his stride and described his 10-week fellowship through this series of wonderful blogs. His last blog was the most heart-felt:

“WAW isn’t just a sewing group. It’s a statement of defiance against what Joseph Kony and the LRA tried to destroy. These women are rebuilding their lives on their own terms—not waiting for outside solutions. My role has been to stand beside them—not as a savior, but as someone who understands what war takes, and who wants to help them reclaim something in return. Still, when they said “thank you”, I felt a sense of pride in my work that I hadn’t felt during my years of ‘service.’

“The sewing machines, the training, the business plan—these are just tools. What’s really happening here is healing. It’s what happens when former fighters support former victims. When those trained to break things learn to build again. And when community rises from the ruins of conflict.”

Looking ahead

With the sewing machines now in place, WAW will ask two of its experienced members, Nighty and Concy, to provide several weeks of basic training to the other WAW members, who have not used a treadle (foot driven) machine before.

Once they get the hang of their machines the WAW group will ask a professional tailor to train them in making and repairing clothes. They hope to be making some money by the end of this year or early in 2026. And in a final gesture that says much about the bond between them, they also want to enrol the oldest surviving son of Mary who passed away so tragically last year, in technical college. That will help them remain connected to Mary and her memory.

Our job here at AP will be simple and rewarding – transfer funds that the WAW artists have raised over the past two years through this appeal, the Sister Artists auction, and the sale of butterfly tea towels. Hopefully, the business will be self-sustaining by the end of 2026, if not sooner.

We hope you find this story as inspiring as we do, and will join in wishing your WAW grantees good luck! We feel privileged to be able to help these remarkable women rebuild their lives and put their talents to such good use. Please click on the various links throughout this report to see how their stitching story has unfolded.

In gratitude,

The WAW team in Uganda and AP in Washington DC.

Links:

• 'Freedom' - a collage of photos from the butterfly quilt show