The Mission Advancement Office is pleased to announce a grant of $20,100 from the Hilton Fund for Sisters. These funds will underwrite a seamstress project, serving young adult women (ages 15 to 24) who have a limited education and lack a stable source of income. They attend the Notre Dame Zinduka Women’s Centre in Arusha, Tanzania. Specific items to be acquired include 58 machines for sewing, embroidery and knitting, and necessary materials.
In addition to practical skills, the young adult women will:
• Study entrepreneurship, leadership and business skills
• Learn to establish personal savings in order to buy materials
• Be encouraged to form micro-finance groups to support one another and provide peer loans
Each student will keep her sewing machine at the end of the program, and she will then have the tools, skills and finances to begin her own seamstress business.
In addition to the practical training in sewing and business skills, participants will grow in understanding health, environment and leadership. The seamstress program will build the girls’ self-confidence and prevent them from entering into childhood marriages and pre-mature pregnancy. They will realize they can make something by themselves and become economically capable, no longer needing to rely on their
relatives. Young men often exploit these at risk girls, and with these skills, they will be less vulnerable.
The Sisters of Notre Dame offer sincere gratitude to the Hilton Fund for Sisters and to all of the donors to our Global Missions Fund.