An Ottawa woman wants to give brides in the Kenyan slums the opportunity of a lifetime. Carol Waters, who volunteers with Project Hope for Africa, is collecting wedding dresses to take to young brides in the Marthare slums of Nairobi. Waters brilliant idea will allow young women to feel very special on their wedding day and then turn their wedding dress into a small business.
When she is in Africa, Waters teaches young women how to sew so that they can earn an income. On her last trip there, she noticed that they didn’t wear the same type of white wedding dresses frequently worn in North America. She asked the women if brides ever wear fancy white dresses and they told her that only very wealthy women are able to do so.
Out of that conversation, Waters came up with a great idea. She planned to collect wedding dresses in Canada and take them to the women in the Kenyan slums so that they could feel very special on their wedding day. But there is more to her plan than that. Waters also wants to help the women turn their dresses into a business renting them out for $5 a day. She told the CBC:
The girls could make some money, I would teach them how to wash them, put false hems on them, they could alter them and maybe it would give 10 girls on a Saturday a special day in their life.
Waters idea is a small, but simple, micro business opportunity for these women. While one dress won’t last forever, it will provide them with some income and also help them hone their sewing skills and their business skills. Marriage is sometimes perceived as a mechanism by which women become submissive to their husbands. With Waters plan, these women’s wedding days will mark the beginning of new entrepreneurial opportunities.
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