You Can Help Them. Let's Partner
Refresh Endeavour is an ideal partner to achieve widespread community transformation for Christ Jesus. We pool the strengths of different stakeholders through our innovative collaboration models. Our friends, partners and well-wishers contribute more than money. Their ideas, volunteering support, other help and more help build stronger societies. We create partnerships and strategies that respond effectively to social and community challenges. Refresh Endeavour relies on individuals, foundations, and corporate contributions to develop our work in supporting women around the world, and to further our vision of Moving Women from Poverty to self-reliance and transform communities for Christ.
Proscovia Khabele
Prossy lives in a village along the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Eastern Uganda. She started a small-scale retail business selling tea leaves, salt, soap and other household items to support her family. But the proceeds from the business is barely enough to feed them all. Prossy gives us a background story.
“I was fortunate enough to study up to Senior 4 at Bushika S.S.S,” says Proscovia. “Then I joined St. Lawrence University in Mbale where I did Public administration and management. It was at this level that I failed to find enough money to pay for the university tuition. There just wasn't enough support so my education ended there. My academic documents are still there. I was not able to pay to get them."
Prossy pauses in reflection before continuing.
"The available and most convenient option for me was marriage. I currently have three biological children. I also take care of three of my sister's children - she was separated from her husband and is unable to help the children.
I am not well, but I am in a better position to help the children. We also take care of my brother's one child whose mother died. My husband's sister also has one child that we help look after," continues the 30 year old woman with a beaming smile.
Proscovia is hopeful and grateful that she has joined our tailoring program this year, thanks to friends like you.
She says, "I am confident that I will be able to help the family better now with the tailoring skills I am getting."
The tailoring program takes a period of 4 months, and we pray to God that along with six other women in her village, Prossy will be able to complete her studies this time round, and go on to impact her family and community positively!
Barbrah Mutonyi
Barbrah is 20 years old and lives in a mud and wattle house. She lives on the slopes of Mt. Elgon with her husband, who runs a motorcycle transportation business (locally known as boda-boda) for a living. The money he makes is not sufficient to support their young family of 8.
Barbrah does not have any practical skill that she can use to help supplement the family's income. Barbrah studied only up to primary seven class. She has not been able to find a job that she can do to earn some money, so she is a stay at home mom.
Barbrah and her husband have 1 biological child and take care of 5 more children in their house. 2 of these dependents are currently in school.
Not being able to study formally in school, her way out of a vicious cycle of poverty is to learn a practical skill.
A tailoring course is practical and Barbrah recognises that she will be able to make some money to supplement her husband's efforts, and see their family well-fed, clothed and see their children through school.
Junic Khabele
Junic is a 43 year old peasant, whose average income is 2,000shs. That is less than a dollar.
Typical of anyone in her situation, Junic and her family have one meal a day.
Junic's husband left her for another woman leaving the burden of providing for the family entirely on her shoulders.
There are 6 other mouths she has to feed daily, and to clothe. She has to pay school fees for 4 of them, by doing menial jobs around her village.
Junic does not know where food will come from each day.
When Junic heard that there was an opportunity for her to learn a practical marketable skill, she was over the moon! To Junic, a tailoring course represents a way to feed her young family, a way to see them through school and a way out of poverty.
Your help can see Junic and others like her through the full 4-month course, and even provide her a hand-up to start a tailoring business of her own. She would need to buy a sewing machine and materials for her business, having learnt the required skills to run and manage such a business.
Rossy Katisi
Rossy looks on in a banana plantation. She is weeding this small garden as part of her daily chores.
Rossy is a peasant. At 45, she still has to dig in other people's farms to be able to earn a little money to feed her family.
She has known no other way to survive apart from digging, which she is getting weak at doing with age. Her family is young and Rossy knows she has to keep working to provide for them.
All the 8 children that she has to take care of are in school; primary and secondary school.
A simpler and less energy-demanding skill like tailoring is what Rossy had been hoping and praying for for sometime. Rossy did not pass on the opportunity to join the tailoring program when the opportunity came.
Rossy dreams of being able to start a tailoring business one day and to be one of the most famous tailors in her village of Bukimuma in Bududa district.