Women's Sewing Project in Kakuma Refugee Camp

The Kakuma women sewing project has been facing challenges, due to limited financial support that has hindered effective efforts by refugee women, the struggle and inadequate sustainability of self-financing to ensure that there are improvements at the sewing school to be self-dependent has been of concern. Refugee depend on aid one hundred percent, overcoming resistance and fostering a culture of openness to change has been difficult especially when learning new practices that do not bring resistance to change. In our last meeting members felt lack of ownership of the project sighting insufficient participation from key stakeholders and individual. Mismatched expectation between the desired outcome and what is realistically achievable has led to many women disappointment, for example last year December, women made at least 15 new clothes for women and children in the camp expecting to sell during charismas, unfortunately they only sold two which has discouraged them. With support from our donors through Global-Giving, we have started a capacity building to enhance new skills through training and mentorship to build confidence, networking with Kenyan women and meeting experts in other fields, we have trained five refugee women in making reusable sanitary towels and they will be training their fellow women in the camp. Each project has unique challenges. Factors such as trauma, political instability back to home countries of refugees, and harsh environmental conditions in the camp has a negative impact capacity building effort. Measuring progress and assessing the impact of the sewing project has been an eye opener and women in the camp are currently leaning new skills and technology in both sewing reusable sanitary pads and soap making. Also, with help of Transforming community for Social Change we are ddeveloping effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to measure both short- and long-term impact, this will help the refuge women access to relevant training programs and skill development opportunities which has been hindering capacity building efforts. This year, we will continue to empower women in the camp and use available resource that will enable the sewing project be a self-financing so that the project can be able to pay the two teachers and get more sewing machines.

Refugee women and young girls who experience period poverty are always traumatized and unable to purchase the menstrual products when their days of need arrive every monthand, in many cases, this means that they cannot go to school or work or otherwise participate freely in daily life activities such as, going for food ratios and water points. For many years, in Kakuma Refugee Camp period poverty has caused physical torture and low self-esteem for school going girls who experience unexpected periods/menstruations in school which comes in with a lot of stereotype, stigma and body shame for soiling the school uniforms which has led to psychological stress and sometimes depression.

Shameof menstruating, soiling of uniform and the stigma surrounding periodshas contributed to early marriages, teenage pregnancy and school dropouts because parents are not able to afford sanitary towels and due to poverty, they will l prefer to buy food instead of sanitary towels.

With support of GlobalGiving through the women sewing project, this has enabled two women from the refugee camp to be trained on making of the reusable sanitary towels and multipurpose soap, the training has greatly improvedknowledge on making reusable sanitary towels using cheaply available materials and skills on menstruation education.This has also enhanced self-esteem for the school going girls and women at the camp as they can easily access the pads during that time of the month