Cozi sits surrounded by women, girls, swaths of fabric,
thread, scissors, and sewing machines. This is her new community at the Mumosho
Women’s Center sewing workshop, and also her path to realize her dream of
supporting her child as a single mother.
Cozi was raised in a family of seven children, where she
helped her mother with her younger siblings, farming, collecting water and firewood. For fun, she played a game
called zero, “where you jump higher and then go down and you clap,” she said.
Cozi went to school up until the second year of secondary school, but after her
father died in the 1996 war in eastern Congo, her mother was unable to afford
to pay for Cozi’s education. She discovered
the sewing workshop through her sister, Bienvenie, and Ernata, one of our graduates who frequently works at
the Center, sewing school uniforms for the kids we send to school, and the
pieces for our Fair Trade partner, The Peace Exchange.
Cozi plans to start her own business with her new sewing
skills and the machine and fabrics that she will receive upon graduation. “Joining the sewing program … means I will
become able to take care of my child whose father is not known and I will also
be able to take care of myself and help my mother,” she tells Amani. “My entire
life is a new story after I had joined the ABFEK sewing program. My colleagues
in the program have become a huge support for me and my child. This program is
an answer to so many of my problems.”
You can help Cozi make these dreams her everyday
reality. We are raising the funds to buy
her sewing kit (and 62 fellow students) for graduation in May. Your
tax deductible donation of $195 purchases a pedal powered Singer sewing
machine (critical in a place without electricity), fabrics, thread, needles,
and scissors to launch their small businesses!
Can you give today?
When Cozi was asked what she would say to you, she replied, “I
want to thank people in America for their support to our Programs … and I would
ask them not to stop. I want to ask People in America and Europe to support
Peace in the Congo. … Above all, war
should stop!”
When you support these women, you empower them to send their
children to school, to raise up a new generation of people to call out for
peace in Congo.
Every dollar makes a difference, and your partnership tells
the women and girls that their stories are heard around the world, and they
matter.
Read more about the people with whom you partner through Action Kivu:
- Sewing students: Ernata, Safi, Amie, Bienvenie, Evelyn
- the women and girls in the literacy program,
- the women learning agriculture lessons on the shared farm,
- the community conversation (women AND men!) on the importance of family planning and contraception
- the animal husbandry / goat program
- the women who weave beautiful baskets
- the school kids: girls at the top of their classes
- & meet Amani, community builder, leader, and visionary! Watch the video to experience his corner of Congo here.
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