By Emma | Dreams Can Be Intern
Maria de Jesus: When I joined this group I had stopped believing in anything. Then I started to understand that I needed to work in order not to depend on the change that the people on my street would give me. I don’t deny it, I was living off people’s change to feed my four children. I had no income at all. Now I have learned a profession, I know how to make “bonecas de pano” and other crafts and with my sales I earn R$ 170.00 a month. It’s still very little, but with the construction of our loft we will be able to increase the size of our group and certainly our production and our income will increase.
Francisca Lima: Here at the project we learn that we are the ones who change our lives. In addition to learning the craft, I also learned to work with money and so I started wanting to study. I returned to school and now I am organizing a group of women to study about fair trade, this story of economic solidarity. We are discovering that we can earn money without exploiting people. We take our portion and the rest we use to buy material to make our products. Before I had no income, and today I earn about R$150.00 a month.
Socorro Viana: I am one of the oldest women in the project. I joined in 2004. I began without knowing anything, but I dedicated myself to making dolls. My dolls were very ugly, because I didn’t have the patience to do all the work properly. Then we got the idea to learn finishing techniques. At the beginning I couldn’t sell any of my dolls, but then I started to make them properly and sell a lot of them. Now I’ve opened a little store in my house and I earn R$200.00 a month. With this money I can feed my 6 children.
By Emma | Dreams Can Be Intern
By Cristina Diogo | Coordinator
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