We were really excited to find our story over 3 pages of the Church Times! What a wonderful write up.

To read the article online visit the Church Times website – A stitch in time saves more than nine!

We employ a representative (sometimes two) from each sewing hub for one day a month (a small sustainable start that we’d like to grow and develop). We share new skills, share life and then they pass on new skills to the rest of their hub members. We thought you’d like to meet all our members.

From our first African sewing hub in Nigeria, may I introduce Joy.

“My name is Arowosomo Joy. I am from Nigeria, Ondo state,  Ilaje local government. I am living in Ondo state. My local region is known for agriculture, our soil is very good in growing seeds and we are also good in livestock farming.  My church serves the community by helping the helpless with what she has, their main focus is to serve humanity and make sure life is worth living for everyone in the community. 

The reason why I wanted to be a focus team member is because I want to learn and share ideas with different people in the world and this will also give me the insight about other cultures of people in the world.”

What is your precious object and why?

“My precious gift was an ancient plate with different designs on it, it was gifted to me when I was about to get married, because the designs shows me leaving my parent house. And whenever I see that plate I do remember I’m no longer in my parent house until recently. I lost it when I move out of my old place but it’s still in my heart.”

Sharon and Celine are from Soroti, in the northern part of Uganda. This sewing hub is connected to the TANU vocational school.

“My name is Sharon Acom. I am an orphan, now married to my beloved husband Joel odongo. I am from the North Eastern part of Uganda, Soroti district, Teso region. Teso is known in agriculture and we grow crops more of home consumption and for sale e.g groundnuts,maize, beans, Cassava, sweet potatoes since our climate is moderate.

I am the co-founder of the organization called transformation advocacy network Uganda (TANU) whereby our major aim is to empower youth in the local community to live a transformed life or being self sustainable through Skilling. Reasons of me being a focus team member is to learn, explore, from other people, culture, socialize, network, create peace and unity world wide. I am a woman of craft, since I grew up I love doing much of craft and being creative and innovative in whatever I do and I believe my being a focus team member am going to learn more, thanks to the focus team family.

God bless”

“My name is Aduto Celine. I am living in Soroti district, Dakabela county, Oculoi sub-county   Adamasiko parish. My local region is known for agriculture, animal rearing and fishing in the wetlands .

In our culture, a man has to marry woman not a woman marrying a man and a man takes all the responsibilities. We have a local charity organization where by our main aim is to transform the lives of people through up-skilling. Our aim is to promote development of the community, unity and humanity among the community. I wanted to be a focus team member so I could learn new business skills and ideas which I can pass on to our local people. I also wanted to make new friends outside the country.”

What is your precious object and why?

“Since my child hood I loved  a sewing machine and I had a dream of knowing how to use it and I had a dream of becoming a seamstress  and my dream has come true and made me to achieve my goals in life where by right now I know how to operate it. I have skills of making clothes and different fashions, even outside the country with the Dorcas Dress! I pass on these skills as a trainer at the vocational centre. This enables me to earn  a living where by I can support my parents now.”

And then we have Esperance, Ezekiel and Gilbert from Burundi.

Esperance says “Hi, I am from Burundi, born in the province of Mwaro, the western part of the country. My place of birth is known for its agricultural practices such as breeding domestic animals (cows, goats and pigs). However it is also known for its touristic scenery. There is a beautiful waterfall which we call the Mwaro falls, a very sacred site, because our kings back then used to perform important rituals. However it is the coldest place as compared to other provinces.

I love being a focus team member because it allows me to broaden my mindset in terms of business and sewing. This is a great opportunity for me to expand my network, learn and share skills as well as having fellowship with other seamstresses. 

I hope to raise my family from the poverty that beholds our home while also pushing the community forward.

I was once vulnerable, having gone through a lot, but the Lord is Good and Faithful. Helping vulnerable women is a passion which I greatly intend to pursue.”

“Hi, my name is Ezekiel Ndayikengurukiye. I am 25 years old, and I am Burundian. I was born in Bubanza province an hour away from the capital city.

Praise God I have been able to finish school. I studied communication (languages Kirundi and French). And I try with English but I don’t speak it very well 😀.

After completing my studies, I went on to pursue sewing because it is difficult to get jobs here.
I have an experience of 3 years, it is my profession. I do additional activities like helping people at their boutiques just so I earn enough to pay rent.

I’m so excited to be a part of this team. I cannot wait to share and gain knowledge on tailoring. I look forward to expanding my skills and using to contribute to helping others in my community.

Gilbert writes “Hi, I am 32 years old. I was born in NYANZA-LAC commune, Makambe province, 148km from the capital Bujumbura. I started my primary school in Tanzania min the refugee camp where we had been since 1993 and continued my secondary education in Burundi. Thank goodness I completed my studies in telecommunications. I speak Kirundi, Swahili and French. After realising I had nothing even though I had studied, I turned to sewing because I had an idea of launching into entrepreneurship, I have 4 years experience and I am a trainer at TWESE MW’INTERAMBERE centre, I found that it was my favourite job. I look forward to sharing and gaining knowledge about sewing. I look forward to expanding my skills and helping others in my community.

And this is Roza and Tina from our Tanzania hub.

And lastly Abigail is setting up a sewing hub in India.

“Hello everyone my name is Abigail, I am from Bengaluru India. My city is IT capital of India because it’s the nation’s leading software exporter as well as a major semiconductor hub.

With my husband, we have both religious and charitable trusts. Through our philanthropic mission we are making positive impact on society such as showing love of humanity to underprivileged women giving gifts of time, talent, and treasure to help make their life better and beautiful.

We are providing sewing machines and teaching them how to sew with the help of The Dorcas Dorcas Project and making them self employed and be self sufficient to their families. We are providing education to underprivileged children. Through this we are sharing God’s love for many lives.

As a focus team member I would like to give a better and happier life to my team members, through all kinds of support physically and mentally.”

Emma has been volunteering for The Dorcas Dress Project in West Oxfordshire for the last six months. Emma loves to sew and make her own clothes, she’s recently been brave enough to buy an overlocker and use it to make our bag templates. Emma chose to volunteer with us to help build her confidence and increase her sewing knowledge.

“I enjoy learning, meeting new people and being creative. Volunteering over the last six months has built my confidence, given me routine and helped me build a stronger ‘can-do’ attitude.”

Emma has been making these lovely key straps, we’d love to show her how her creativity could become a future career option. Why not stock up now for Christmas!! These are ideal stocking fillers and great to keep small things like keys visible.

3 key straps fro £12 – visit our shop.

I have just got back from an amazing time in Uganda.  I have been blessed beyond measure and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know some of the most beautiful people I know.  Over the last few weeks I’ve met, in-person, people from 5 different sewing hubs, who have all kindly agreed to contribute in some way to my research in how we should build community as an organisation.  I’ve had the honour of training people in enterprise skills and sewing machine maintenance, preaching and making 100s of English pancakes.

I took too few pictures, sorry. But I learnt so much about community…

3 main points about community that I am currently reflecting on is:

• the importance of familiarity and belonging
• the significance of skills and development
• the value of friendship and teamwork

• the importance of familiarity and belonging

I talked with a lot of people and one of the leading themes about community was the need to belong and the importance of familiarity.  Familiarity is a funny thing because different things are familiar to all of us.  Our meals, our friendships and relationships, our lived spaces, our commutes to work, our sense of place and purpose,  but most of all our sense of being known and loved by those around us.  

• the significance of skills and development

Christine made an interesting comment whilst I spent time with her.  Christine is from Kenya and she is starting our newest hub.  Life has not been an easy ride for her, and she reminded me, “There is one thing that can not be taken away from you.  You can loose all your belongings, be robbed or abandoned, but you can never have a skill taken from you.  A skill is a treasure that should never be taken for granted.”  Over the last 12 months we’ve had the privilege of helping 75 people learn a new skill or improve an old one, in dressmaking.  That’s 75 people a little more empowered to provide for themselves or their families.   

• the value of friendship and teamwork

Whilst visiting people in the slums in Kampala I was struck by how much people cared for those around them and the love and intimacy they shared for one another.  Small children played in the streets, yet everyone had a caring eye on them.  There was always time to listen to a story, know a person and their needs and dreams.  People mattered, possessions did not.  

So, if asked, what is important to you, when you think of community?

I have just noticed how long it has been since we posted out an update, sorry.

We’ve had a busy few months. July and August was spent planning and preparing for our first festival trade stand. We went to Greenbelt: a wonderfully eclectic activism and music event. It turned out to be total success – we sold all our dress stock by the Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the weekend simply sharing with visitors what we did!

Since then we have been busy restocking, we’ve gone from an empty online shop to a really healthy selection of dresses. I hope to add more stock in the next few days…

I think the other big thing is the hopeful plans to visit some hubs – funding dependent…. As CEO, I have have been studying towards an MA in Theology and Mission through CMS. I am in my final year and about to embark on my dissertation. Our vision is to be a place where love and fellowship thrive, this research project is about discovering what that could look like. I’d love to use my research to include in-person observations and listening, which would involve travelling to Africa. We’ve set up a Crowdfunding campaign to see if we can enable this to happen.

if you’d like to help us achieve this then follow the link below to donate something towards the costs.

Which leaves me the joy of signing off.

May you each know God’s peace and grace as we walk towards Advent.

Maria

We’re building women’s self-esteem and providing an opportunity for asylum seeker’s residing in a local hotel to learn a new skill.

Over the last few months we have been visiting a hotel where over 100 families from around the world are being housed whilst their case for seeking refuge in this country is heard. Families from all sorts of places: we’ve been learning to say “hello!” and “thank you” in Farsi, Persian, Arabic, Albanian and Kurdish, for example. Each week around 20 – 30 women join us for an afternoon of sewing. Some are professional tailors, others have excellent skills passed down from their mothers and some have yet to learn. We’ve been fortunate to receive funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to help us fund the teaching and buy sewing machines. And the Mothers’ Union Diocese of Oxford have generously given funds to one of their members so they could provide 20 women with their own sewing kits. I had never really contemplated how useful my mobile phone would be to talk into and receive a translated message back. The women must have made at least 60 garments between them so far too!

It is good to get involved in activities around the village. We had a great village celebration for the King’s Coronation and we decided to participate in a village flower festival. We made lots of flowers and produced a wonderful display.

It was nice to pause whilst we made, to dedicate a flower to someone we could not hug right now, simply praying for their safety and peace in this difficult time.

We would like to branch out and offer sewing classes in other places where there is need, likely in a community hall, accessible to asylum seekers, refugees and people on low income that would love to sew, mend, alter and make clothes from donations made within their local community. We’ll provide the sewing skills, resources and training. All we ask is that there are 3 or 4 local volunteers eager to be a friendly face, a listening ear (with google translate if necessary !?!) willing to follow instruction and enable others to copy.

If you are interested please do be in touch dorcasdressproject@gmail.com

May I properly introduce you to some of the people that work at TANU, a vocational skills centre, based in Eastern Uganda.

It has been a huge privilege to work with the whole TANU community, and an honour to say that The Dorcas Dress Project is one of their partners. I thank Jerry from TEN communities for introducing us. May I take this opportunity to introduce you to Joel, Rachel, Eveline and Regina, some of the people who all work at the centre. Joel managers the centre and oversees all the vocational programmes which include, carpentry, building, computer repair and tailoring. We asked each of them what their favourite colour was and why.

The ladies have been really busy increasing their efficiency on the sewing machines. It has been a joy to join them on zoom to virtually participate in classes, help them diagnose issues with their sewing machines so they can repair them, and participate in community worship and conversation. Here you can see Rachael, the Production Manager overseeing the paper pattern preparation, fabric cutting and sewing.

My What’sApp feed has been busy with photographs and smiles. I hope you enjoy these photographs as much as I did when I received them.

This feels like a little milestone for us here at The Dorcas Dress Project. This is the first time we have been able to present a range of dresses where we have wholly and solely relied on our virtual learning environment and online zoom classrooms to learn together and more importantly for me, grow a community across continents. If you’d like to see some of the resources we use you can sign in as a guest. Everyone has been really busy preparing a package of lovely dresses. These arrived earlier this week. What do you think?

We’re trialing out a new variation on our pricing structure. So you will notice when you visit our shop that these dresses really are a very reasonable price. We hope that will encourage you to order one: the more orders we make, the greater impact we can make, together, to be a part of a growing and thriving community. This offer is available for 6 weeks only, so act fast! And if you’d like to add a donation into your basket at the same time then that will help us deliver our online classes, continue producing excellent online virtual learning and help us expand and serve other sewing hubs.

We are hoping, for example, to help Christine set up a sewing hub in Western Kenya. Christine explains how due to the challenges of living in poverty, girls are often forced not to finish their schooling, either because they are needed to financially support their families, their families can not afford to pay for their education, or because of poverty marry very young.

They have made fantastic progress as they build a community space to meet, worship and teach from. Christine is a well qualified, specialising in agriculture and a keen dressmaker too (no surprise there!). She is also a wonderful ambassador amongst her community, teaching and encouraging those around her to be the best they can be.

Isn’t the scenery beautiful!

There are so many ways to support us. Buying something is a win for us and a win for you too!

I attended a prayer meeting this morning, with Great Lakes Outreach, one of our other partner organisations (more news from Burundi very, very soon!!). During the devotional time Roger focused on Psalm 91 and the shadow of the Father’s wing. He explained how it provided a place of security, a place of refuge and a protective shield.

We have been venturing into new ground in the UK: working with asylum seekers living in destitution in hotels. It has been a steep learning curve over the last few months. We’ve learnt about needs and wants. We’ve discovered the power of persuasion can often be at the detriment of the timid. And we’ve realised that life is never as simple as it seems.

Pray with us for security as we stand up amongst giants: as we meet with authorities who have the power to love and demonstrate compassion; as we compete alongside big fashion brands for a tiny foothold in the retail market. Pray for us to be a place of refuge for everyone that comes to a sewing hub, that they would find a place of peace and reconciliation, a place to dwell and know that they are loved, and a place where we can share our skills and love of dressmaking in way that grows friendships and builds community. And pray for a protective shield, in this mornings meeting this was a reflection on our failings, so we pray that in all our doings and conversations there is grace, grace to fail, grace when we act inappropriately and therefore grace to apologise and grace to enjoy simple fellowship together.

May the coming weeks be ones of bounty and plenty for you all.

From Maria

And The Dorcas Dress Project team

Please share this newsletter with whomever you think will be interested in what we are doing, and if you’d like to receive our regular newsletters…

Significant growth, new sewing hubs and exciting local UK initiatives.

Growth! 

Our newer sewing hubs in Burundi and Uganda have all been busy.

It’s been an absolute delight to visit Burundi and Uganda over the last few months, all from the comfort of my workshop in the UK.  Isn’t zoom amazing!  The different sewing hubs, associated with GLO in Burundi have just posted me pictures of the first dresses they have made.  I am so looking forward to seeing their progress and stocking their dresses in our online shop.

In the meantime you might want to consider buying a dress made in Nigeria.  Buying a dress will make a difference to the ladies that are part of our sewing hub there. 

The UK

Our hub in Shropshire continues to send us encouraging reports.

The group, hosted by Hope Church in Oswestry is currently serving a group of women who each enjoy the friendships and relationship they are finding within their sewing group.  This is a big part of who we are: enabling people to flourish in safe places where they are nurtured and valued.

A few weeks ago we ran a jewellery workshop with a group of learners linked to Guideposts in North Oxfordshire.

It was great fun enabling the group of 6 learners to make gifts for their loved ones so close to Valentine’s Day.

And the hottest news off the press, is our new hub in West Oxfordshire.

This has been a project on my heart for some time now.  A hub close to my home, where, as CEO, I can put my dressmaking heart into practical use for people in West Oxfordshire.  It’s been a prayer, overwhelmingly answered, as just before Christmas we discovered asylum seekers and refugees were being housed locally.  We are providing a safe place where we can build friendships across cultures and languages. Our aim is to help these women to settle, and when permitted, provide character references to assist them in seeking work. 

All in all in the last year we’ve grown from working with 1 or 2 people in Nigeria and 3 or 4 people in the UK, to working with well over 100 people from all over the world.  How awesome is that.  Sorry I haven’t found time to write, I’ve been a bit distracted!

New hubs

An update from the new sewing hub in Tanzania.  The equipment did arrive, but sadly with unexpected import taxes and release fees at the border have meant we have had to hold off buying treadle bases for the sewing machines we sent, whilst we wait for more funds to come in.

And it’s not stopping there, we are having encouraging conversations with a group in Kenya and with networks linked to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In other exciting news.

I have had the great honour of teaching students, via zoom, at our sewing hub in Teso, Uganda.  It’s been great fun to engage with all the students and get to know them a little bit.  We’ve had drawing classes, sewing classes and a session on servicing and repairing machines.  Within a space of 2 hours the group had managed to get all their machines in tip-top shape, some of which had not been working for some time.  Sharing knowledge and friendship is such a gift and a joy.  A few weeks ago I had a video call from Everline, she wanted to introduce be to the youngest member of their group.  I have been given permission to share photographs of baby Maria.  I realise what a great honour and privilege it is to have someone named after me.  Please join me in praying for Maria, her older brother and her family: for good health and for laughter and joy to fill their home.

We have been busy putting in funding bids to a variety of different organisations, in the hope of sustaining our rapid growth and bringing much needed exposure to our charity, which in turn we pray will increase sales and economic stability to those we aim to serve.  Please be praying these funding applications are received favourably.

Thanks for reading.

If you notice a change in style it is because Martha very generously breathed life into my words last year. Thank you so much Martha for your support, encouragement and enthusiasm for The Dorcas Dress Project: we really valued your contribution and miss your input.  

I will try not to make it so long until I write again.

See you soon!

Maria

and

The Dorcas Dress Project Team 🙂