Solange: Tailor - Teacher

Solange, working at her home

Tailoring has long been a mainstay of trades education in Rwanda. For women especially, it offers the flexibility to work at or near home and to structure their day around caring for children. In 2012, the introduction of mandatory twelve-year basic education increased demand for affordable school uniforms—and for tailors to make them. Then, in 2018, Rwanda banned imported second-hand clothes, giving local manufacturing a much-needed boost.

Solange completed secondary school but was unable to find a job. She spent two years at home helping her mother with casual farm work.

In 2015, she was given the opportunity to study tailoring at the Center for Champions. She immediately saw this as a way to change her life. As the eldest of seven children, Solange felt responsible for contributing to her family’s income, but was uncertain about her own future. “I really couldn’t see what my future would be,” she says. “I thought... I knew that it was hard to go forward. As the eldest child, I needed something that would boost the family’s income. That’s why I chose skills training—because I knew that through training I could earn more money.”

After graduating, Solange didn’t find tailoring work immediately. “I found a job with a cleaning company because I couldn’t afford to buy my own sewing machine,” she explains. “With the money I saved, I bought this machine. When I finished the cleaning job, the graduation certificates had been printed. With the certificate, I was able to get casual tailoring work—because I was now qualified.”

Working as a tailor brought in the income her family needed. “First, I helped support my brothers through school.” Now—seven years after graduating—Solange trains young women and men in the same trade that changed her life.

Solange teaching tailoring at the Center for Champions

As a teacher, she sees personal growth as inseparable from technical learning. “The students come from different backgrounds,” she explains. “Some are orphans, some are young parents, others come from poverty. So you find that if we begin with theory, some don’t follow well. But when we move to the practical stage, and I see some who are struggling, who are behind the others—that’s when I start getting closer to them.”

It’s in those moments, she says, that real transformation begins. “When they start telling me, ‘There’s no future for me, I can’t achieve anything because my family is poor,’ I tell them: even if they think there’s no future, they will have opportunities. They can find a job, or start working on their own. Then you start to see them change—to become happy.”

This pastoral care—shaping students’ character as well as their skills—is central to the work of the Center for Champions. “Firstly, as a Christian organization, we begin by sharing the word of God,” Solange says. “Then we start showing them that they have a common purpose and shared goals. In the beginning, some students want to keep their skills to themselves. But we tell them: you have the same aim. You should share materials, learn together, help one another. Through that—collaborating, working together—they develop good behavior.” And they become good tailors.

The Center for Champions changed Solange’s life in three ways: first, by giving her a skill; second, by giving her a purposeful role as a teacher and mentor; and third, by introducing her to her future husband—an AEE field coordinator—while teaching at the Center. And the benefits continue: “With the money from my work I was able to contribute to buying this house. We don’t owe any money on it.”