Help GBV Survivors in Uganda Learn to Tailor

This report is going to 25 friends who have donated $2,528 to help Women in Action for Women (WAW), our partner in Uganda, launch a tailoring business.

We have wonderful news! Three WAW tailors, seen in the photo with their trainer, are hard at work making and selling dresses and repairing clothes. These are women who have survived brutal treatment and it is enormously exciting to see them take this important step.

They have quite a way to go before they can compete on the open market. They need to refine their products, agree on a brand and expand their customer base. Until such time they will probably need to be subsidised through their GlobalGiving appeal.

But they have achieved the big breakthrough and started to sell. What is more, they already have a diversified source of income! Some of the initial capital for their tailoring business has come from the sale of tea towels that they designed. We'll explain more in this report.

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Let's start with a brief reminder of how and why this project began.

Women in Action for Women is an association for women in Gulu, Uganda, who were seized by rebels from the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) when they were children and forced to undergo years of harrowing treatment that included marriage and impregnation.

Life remained difficult after they escaped and returned to their villages with their children.  Neighbors suspected them of collaborating with the rebels. They had missed out on an education. Several had lost their parents. They did not have husbands to rely on. Like many survivors they were tough-minded and determined and took on jobs in the informal sector such as cooking, cleaning and trading. But then they were hit by COVID.

It seemed as if they could not catch a break.

WAW was a response by Victoria, one of the most prominent LRA survivors who was determined to help other survivors regain their confidence and re-enter society.

The Advocacy Project got to know these remarkable women in 2021 when we sent Anna, a student Peace Fellow at the Fletcher School (Tufts University) to serve as a Peace Fellow in Gulu. Anna helped the ten WAW members describe their captivity through stitching for this dramatic advocacy quilt.

They were keen to continue stitching and in the summer of 2022, Bobbi, our quilting coordinator, visited Uganda and conducted a week of open-air training which she described in this heartfelt blog. The WAW stitchers produced embroidered blocks which we put up for sale on our online store Southern Stitchers.

In 2023 the WAW stitchers returned to story-telling and produced these ten stories about the brutal impact of COVID on women in Gulu district. We assembled the stories into another powerful quilt which we showed at several exhibitions and profiled in a catalogue.

By now the WAW stitchers were keen to expand the market for their embroidery, so we took a bit of a gamble and asked them for a swarm of embroidered butterflies. We selected the best ten butterfly designs (one from each WAW artist) and commissioned 500 tea towels made from the designs in time for Christmas. The gamble paid off and the combination of embroidery and towels had brought in around $2,500 by the end of the year.

The butterfly tea towels were such a success that we commissioned another colorful batch of butterflies for the third in our series of Sister Artists projects. We sent the butterflies out to skilled quilters in North America and Kenya who made 37 sparkling art quilts. We exhibited and auctioned the quilts last summer for a cool $6,955.

By the summer of 2025, the WAW artists had set their hearts on launching a tailoring business. Unlikely many visionaries, they also had some capital in the bank! Their auction had done well and their appeal on GlobalGiving had brought in $3,048 by June of last year.

At this point, their story moves back to Uganda.

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In the summer of 2025 we sent another talented Peace Fellow to Gulu. Aaron, a burly US Army veteran with a heart of gold, was studying at Texas A&M university. He immediately clicked with the WAW stitchers, who are normally reticent with strangers. By now they were down to five. One founding member had died the previous year in a devastating accident at home. Four decided that tailoring was not for them.

Helped by Aaron, the WAW team purchased sewing machines and set them up at the offices of the Gulu Displaced Persons Union (GDPU), another partner of The Advocacy Project, for a modest rent.

The stitchers then hired a trainer, Innocent, to help them buy material and master their new machines. By early March they had made about 30 dresses. One of their first customers was Emma, a team leader at GDPU seen in the photo above, who ordered an elegant dress for 20,000 Ugandan shillings ($6).

Emma has continued to keep a friendly eye on the WAW stitchers and she reports that their business has picked up over the last two months. Two more WAW members have dropped out but the remaining three have become accomplished tailors, as Emma reports in this recent update:

Concy 43, is very passionate about learning! She has made 20 pieces of clothing and sold 10 pieces to eight adults at 20,000 shillings ($6) and 3 pieces for children at 5,000 shillings ($1.50). This may not seem much, but Concy has earned 175,000 shillings ($47) and used it to repair her sewing machine and buy material for new pieces.

Margaret 46, studied for four months and learned how to make handbags, dresses and school uniforms. So far she has made and sold eleven dresses at 7,000 shillings ($1.9) and two dresses at 15,000 shillings. In all Margaret has earned 107,000 shillings ($28.3).

Nighty has emerged as the group’s natural leader and most accomplished tailor. Nighty has made 10 handbags, 30 dresses and 10 school uniforms which have sold for 420,000 Uganda shillings ($112). She has used the money to purchase more material, service her sewing machine, and buy new threads.

Nighty also wants her donors to know that she is very grateful for your support! She says: “This project has been a blessing because we can take care of our families with the skills we have learned, unlike those days when we had nothing.”

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Having mastered the art of making clothes and found customers, this tightly knit group of survivors is now looking for larger contracts that they can work on together (one of their original and most important goals).

They have received a commission from a church in Gulu to make uniforms for women and children at a Sunday School at 10,000 shillings a piece. They are also thinking of approaching village schools and village markets.

This is all important progress but Emma from GDPU (who continues to keep a friendly eye on the WAW tailors) added some caveats in her recent report. In addition to their tailoring, the women are working in the fields to grow food for their families, which forced them to miss several training days. They still have a long way to go before their uniforms are top quality. They find it difficult to keep proper receipts.

Emma reminds us that the WAW tailors have been through a lot in their lives and are not as young as they used to be. “They are passionate to do tailoring but it will take time.”

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Our takeaway from this is that the tailoring business is off to a good start but needs another push.

They will need more training to make uniforms and dresses that can compete with more established producers. They have identified a promising market in churches and village schools, but will need to scale up production and manage distribution to meet demand. They will need to strengthen their organization, starting with accounts.

All of this will require further investment from WAW’s friends – less than in the past, for sure, but still significant. As a result we will keep this appeal open and hope to raise more donations on July 16, when GlobalGiving will organize another bonus day. We will continue to promote the WAW tea towels. And we will cover the cost of two more months of training.

In addition to the financial support we will continue to help WAW strengthen the business. Emma from GDPU will continue to offer advice and friendship, which she does so well. And we will send another smart Peace Fellow, Rhonwyn, who studies at the School of International Training (SIT) to work at GDPU and WAW this summer. We hope you will follow Rhonwyn's blogs.

The journey continues for the brave women of WAW!

In gratitude,

GDPU in Uganda and AP in Washington DC