“I used to think education was the key. But vocational training is the key … I know if they have a skill they’ll be able to make money.”
— Rhonda Rowe
Rhonda Rowe has always been handy with a needle and thread.
So when the Stockholm, SK resident was in Africa in 2011, and saw the difficulties many faced in eking out a living, she began to think about how important having a trades skill could be.
Rowe said it has always been said education helps lift people out of poverty, but she suggests that view needs tweaked a little, to be the teaching of a skill.
“I used to think education was the key. But vocational training is the key,” she said.
“… I know if they have a skill they’ll be able to make money.”
The ability to sew is one skill that could lead to opportunities, offered Rowe, adding it might be as simple as sewing for others in a local village, to creating items to sell in markets, but there are at least opportunities.
It was not that people in Uganda did not already sew. Most have a rudimentary level of sewing as it is near essential as clothes must last. They are resized, patched and repaired for as long as possible.
“But there was a need for added instruction, some formal training,” said Rowe. “That’s where the seed for a sewing school started in 2011.”
The first step in Rowe’s dream was to attain a certificate to actually teach the trade of sewing, which she achieved through attending a Martha Pullen Sewing Licensing course in Alabama, U.S.A. in 2012.
Then the work on a sewing school began in earnest.
The second step was financing.
“I did fundraising through my face painting,” said Rowe, who attended various area events and made children smile with her art, while taking the money she was paid and setting it aside for her school.
Then the New Life Community Church in Whitewood came on side with a pledge “to pay the rent on the property for a year.”
With funds in place Rowe headed to Uganda in February for a two-month stay.
The school, at least the initial one as Rowe has a longer term dream to open at least two additional locations, will be located in the Iganga region of Uganda.
While her time included a couple of side opportunities, including helping out in a school when a teacher was away, the main focus was to turn the building from more or less a dilapidated dump, into one which would be suitable for a sewing school.
Working with local people, Rowe oversaw the painting and other work necessary to reclaim the building, which is now ready for the next phase, the installation of sewing machines and the beginning of lessons.
“I’m hoping to go back sometime between June and November, for a few months, to set up the machines in the building and start training,” she said
Rowe said she has lined up four treadle sewing machines and a treadle serger from a source in Uganda, adding it made no sense to consider electric as the many in Uganda live without electricity, the school included.
Rowe said it was important to buy the machines locally, and most of the fabric as well, as it all contributes to the economy.
The initial class will be small, likely only four, or five, people Rowe said she plans to hand pick, this already showing some skill in sewing; “people who will hopefully be able to teach others in my absence.”
Rowe said the first class will essentially be an attempt to teach a group of teachers for the school, as she wants it to be a long term initiative.
“I don’t want to see it go by the wayside,” she offered.
Within three years Rowe would like to see the school “running on its own,” with her visiting once a year just to check on things.
That would allow her to then turn her attention to a second school in Jinja, and then a third across the border in a poor, rural area of Kenya.
Rowe said her initiative is not one designed to make her money.
“It’s not for me to make money. I just want to help these people,” she said, adding she hopes with a skill they can rise above the poverty they now face.
And for Rowe the experience has been made special by the people she has met on her journey.
“It’s a privilege to be there, to meet so many people on so many levels, from the very poor to government officials,” she said.
