Charity is from the Fly Deaf Inclusive training programme in Lusaka, Zambia. There, deaf people across the local area are supported through skills learning, gaining confidence and a path to independence. This is her testimony!

The Fly Deaf Inclusive Project has been a TWAM beneficiary for many years. From small beginnings, it has grown over the past decade into a community organisation serving a large rural area on the outskirts of Lusaka.

It currently supports over 40 deaf people - mostly women - through skills training, regardless of disability, ensuring dignity and inclusion for all. Even a bicycle TWAM helped donate in 2016 is making a difference, enabling the local pastor to travel across the community to reach those most in need and invite them into the programme!

Singer sewing machines make up over 20% of all the tools TWAM sends - and they are treasured!

When Fly Deaf first opened its doors, Charity stepped forward. An unmarried woman, she was eager to learn and wanted to contribute in any way she could. She told us it all started by admiring local tailors, watching them design dresses and skirts, dreaming of doing it herself one day.

With access to the bank of sewing machines TWAM provided, Charity became the very first person to learn tailoring through the project.

The community at Fly Deaf today. Charity is seated at the centre front.

Today, she is still at Fly Deaf. Whilst other women will leave to rejoin the community, open tailoring businesses, or set up their own courses to teach others, Charity opted to stay and find work at the Initiative. She felt this was the best way to use her skills to teach others like her, many of whom are not only deaf but single mothers, rape victims, refugees of political violence, or widows - with very few opportunities elsewhere.

She is also Fly Deaf's secretary, playing a vital part in their operations and outreach - she keeps meeting minutes, manages financial records, and allocates training hours for new participants on the sewing machines.

Sola and Maria, two of Charity's fellow trainees.

And of course, she is still learning!

She makes handmade ribbons and decorations, and building the experience to design and sell her own dresses.

“I was doing nothing before, so I am happy to have something I can work hard for," she tells us. "Tailoring will bring me self-employment. If you put the work in, you will see the reward.”

Once she feels she is ready, she hopes to launch her own brand of designs to the community, using both her tailoring skills and her financial acumen to open her own tailoring shop.

Her journey from learner to leader shows how the right tools, placed in the right hands, can unlock confidence, independence, and purpose!

The sewing group at Fly Deaf, hard at work on TWAM sewing machines making beautiful garments!