Care and Share Recap

We spent two weeks with the Care and Share ladies. The group identified some of their most promising members and sent them to train with us at our office in Jinja. These members would become the teachers for the larger group. On the first day we had 7 students. After carefully assessing their machine and hand sewing skills we were faced with a tough decision. Two of the women were having a considerable amount of trouble seeing, operating the treadle and following basic instructions. They were having so much trouble that we felt that it was unlikely that they would ever evolve into group leaders. Therefore, we invited them to continue to learn with us the following week when we would be observing the teachers in action. This left us with 5 students, Miria, Florence, Betty, Betty and Prossy. We split this group in to 2 smaller groups based on skill level. The 2 Bettys needed practice with the machine, so we set them up with simple bag projects. The other three women were asked to complete a complicated mans shirt. Jamie’s education background came in useful when he suggested that we create a rubric to make our quality expectations clear from the start and to give a framework for evaluation. When the students had completed the shirts, we sat down and graded them together. Tara and I were tough graders, but I felt it was an invaluable tool for emphasizing the importance of quality, detail, design, stitch tension and fit. On my last day with the Care and Share ladies, Tara and I presented Miria and Florence (our two strongest students) with certificates for the completion of a Men’s Shirt Making Course. It was another difficult decision not to present one to Prossy, who had also completed a shirt, but we were able to point to her low scores on her rubric as an explanation. We acknowledged all 5 teachers that trained with us, plus another 2 that who showed considerable skill with a Sewing Hope necklace.