It was last December when Sarah Glover of Born to Be Beautiful noticed at an Anglia Ruskin University Careers Fair that Afrinspire had partners in Uganda who were training girls in hairdressing in order to get started in employment.
In March 2018 Sarah accompanied an Afrinspire team to visit some of Afrinspire's partners with a view to running a 2 week beauticians course with them. Sarah has now just returned from training 21 girls in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, where they were
hosted by Miken Artists.
We are absolutely delighted at how successfully the project has been.
Sarah had a training team of three with her. There was a pre-agreed number of 16 girls coming from 3 of Afrinspire's partners. When the course started, no less than 21 showed up! The 16 carefully planned manicure and pedicure kits provided by the team had to be redistributed into more kits.
The course covered theory and practice. During the second week Miken Artists, who run their business out of 5 small trader units in a small alley, suggested that Born to Be
Beautiful set up their own beauty parlour in Unit 6, providing a place for some of the girls to work from. In a short space of time this unit was transformed with a new coat of paint and will be used immediately, but launched officially in January. Hannah painted the butterfly logo and left Kenneth, who is a sign writing artist, to add the words.
The verdict on this training reached Afrinspire even before Sarah arrived back in the UK.
Mariam Mwadj wrote "l have been very busy with Sarah Glover and at work. I have been working for 12 hours a day. Thank you for connecting Sarah to Uganda, the program by Born to be Beautiful is really going to change the girls lives, most especially those who attended the course with interest. I want to inform you that already ten girls have found places to work. I am very happy that even the girls that l took to the course have found work. Thank you, thank you."
Mariam and some other girls from Nakoloke Tailoring and Arts attended the course and they have already set up a beautician station in their small tailoring shop as an extra income generating stream and as a workplace for the newly trained girls.
Born to be Beautiful is an independent UK charity in its own right and Afrinspire is delighted to be associated with them in our common goal of job-creation for young people in Africa. This course was fully funded by Born to be Beautiful.
