(ERGO) – A free course in tailoring has enabled former pastoralist Kafiyo Adan Hassan, 43, to confidently leave the house in Badbado IDP camp in central Somalia, where they have lived for a few years, to earn a living for her family.
For the first time she has enrolled her two daughters and three sons in school and is able to afford the $30 tuition fees.
“I was a stay-at-home mother, and I grew up in the rural areas. I didn’t have any skills and I could not afford much for my children. This was an important opportunity. I now hope to save some money and open a shop,” she said.
Kafiyo’s family moved from Dhumodle, 25 kilometres west of Adado in Galgadud, after losing their 250 goats and two camels to the last major drought in 2017. They settled in Badbado camp near the town.
She was among 30 women trained in tailoring for several months by local organisation Wadani Institute. The $5-7 she earns from her day’s work supplements her husband’s casual earnings from construction sites.
Nasro Mohamed Ali, 21, also took the training after hearing about it from a friend. She has two children and has specialised in making women clothes. She says she is no longer stressed about paying her family’s bills as well as school fees for two of her six siblings. They used to all depend on her mother’s small income working in a butchery.
“I start my job at nine in the morning and stay there till five in the evening. We get something every day, sometimes $5 sometimes more than $10. I never thought I would get this job and when I started I got an ambition and I believed I got an income,” she explained.
The women tailors in Badbado camp work decided to work as a cooperative and collect sewing jobs each morning from cloth vendors. They share the work and divide the income collectively.
“When we got the training we thought it would be more profitable to work together instead of working separately,” said Nasro, “I believe this method is better.”
Each woman in the group gives half a dollar a day to the group’s savings, which they aim to use in future to open a new tailoring shop.
The Wadani programme, supported by Mercy Corps, also trained 10 men as electricians. Since opening in 2018, the institute has trained a total of 480 people in vocational skills, mostly former pastoralists who lost their livelihoods and students who dropped out of formal education.
The director of Wadani, Mohamed Hussein Shuriye, said the centre responded to the growing problem of people without any skills to support themselves.
“We saw the people displaced by drought and conflict and we decided to set up this institute to give them training. We thought rather than giving people aid handouts it is better to teach the people skills so that they can achieve sustainable improvement in their lives,” he said.
