Kivu Sewing Workshop

WORKING WITH A CAUSE

Kivu Sewing Workshop is a pro-bono project we’re currently working on with author and journalist Kevin Sites (Yahoo: In the hot zone). After seeing an article in wired magazine calling for web guru’s to help with the project, we jumped in to do our part.

From the article:

The "Kivu Sewing Workshop for the Welfare of Women" aims to help rape victims "regain confidence and purpose." Since 1998, a reported 5.4 million people have died because of conflict in Eastern Congo (formerly Zaire). The rape of civilian women is so common there that the United Nations' top humanitarian coordinator, John Holmes, says it's "almost a cultural phenomenon."

Sites got involved after meeting a victim called "Serapina," who'd been repeatedly raped by rebel soldiers and forced to witness other atrocities. Her first husband and two children were killed in front of her in 1997. Seven years later Serapina was attacked a second time; she was raped again and her second husband and unborn child were both killed.

The workshop is headed by Amani Mataboro Tom, who was Sites' fixer and translator for the Congolese leg of The Hot Zone project. Tom was motivated to start the workshop by sexual violence inflicted on members of his own extended family. Training at the workshop will last for eight months. In exchange for free tuition, participants must pass on skills to other women in the workshop. The workshop in Walengu hopes to operate on as little as $500 a month.