THE TUNAJITAMBUA TAILORS

2018

By Standing Voice

August 17^th, 2018

"The Tunajitambua Tailors are the most determined group of learners I’ve encountered, hands down. Teaching them reaffirmed my belief that sewing is never just sewing, and clothes are never just clothes. For people with albinism, this workshop became a source of agency. It was an opportunity to take ownership of something, to elevate their own status, and to help each other grow." -- Kate Uzzell (workshop leader)

The Tunajitambua Tailors were founded by Standing Voice in 2017. Based at our Umoja Training Centre, they are a group of people with and without albinism developing the skills and confidence to tailor professionally. As part of our Summer Skills Workshop, the group received a special, eight-day workshop under the guidance of international visiting specialist Kate Uzzell and local tailor Mary Makinda. For participants with albinism, this training provides a pathway toward income security, and a platform to escape outdoor occupations detrimental to their skin.

Greeting beginners as well as more competent returning faces, Kate and Mary delivered a stimulating programme culminating in the production of hats—a pertinent project for those requiring sun protection. The workshop began with a focus on design—conceptualising, illustrating and planning one’s product—before moving into production and brand development.

The tailors learned how to maximise use of their materials and minimise waste, ensuring quality control and uniformity for items made in batch. They also collaborated with other workshop groups, as the Umoja Photographers captured their work through a lens, and the Upendo Printers worked with them to develop their first company logo: a palm leaf, a symbolic nod to sun protection.

Throughout this process, I felt the group identity building. There were people with albinism who took to the process far quicker than their peers without the condition, and many were helping their partners to improve! Florentina, an inspirational woman with albinism who built her own tailoring enterprise with the support of Standing Voice, was an absolute force of nature: floating across the workshop to help others, she was more like a co-facilitator! Charles, who also has albinism, was the group's unofficial technician, dispensing advice and fixing equipment whenever a problem cropped up. Together they united the team and brought us together as a unit. -- Kate Uzzell

I want to be a role model for my community. When people see what I have achieved they will see that a woman with albinism can do anything, that she too is capable of defying expectations and realising her dreams. -- Florentina Ngoroma (workshop participant)

The Summer Skills Workshop has taught me to make hats, pillowcases and bed sheets that I can sell. Perhaps, together, the other tailors and I can build an enterprise that will create many more possibilities for all of us. I’m so grateful for the support of Standing Voice and their belief in my ability to succeed. -- Charles Andrew Kariro (workshop participant)

“I had never been closely associated with people with albinism, but this workshop gave me a chance to give back to my society by helping them. The whole experience was so overwhelming and touching: deep down, we knew we were helping people to equip themselves with skills, and this can prevent them from being vulnerable in future.” -- Zipporah Zealot (workshop translator)

This workshop invigorated my faith in what tailoring can achieve. In one week, I watched a group of vulnerable people step away from ordinary life to find an inner transformation. Skills were developed, for sure; but more than that, less tangibly and somehow more profoundly, a ceiling was shattered. The participants with albinism proved to me, themselves and everybody else that their condition is not limiting, and their capacity to learn, and grow, and create, need know no bounds. -- Kate Uzzell