Tuesday, January 3, 2012

LIFTED Uganda update


          LIFTED Uganda has amazing and wonderful news!!!! 


Since the beginning of the idea of LIFTED Uganda I have dreamt of one day getting our ‘crafts’ into a very big tourist store here in Kampala.  I can’t say I really thought it would happen because I wasn’t sure how far the bibs would go as far as popularity.  Well, dreams have come true and prayers have been answered for me, my sister, and the LIFTED ladies!!!


Mary training Miriam, another LIFTED lady!

Jane, our newest LIFTED lady!!
The LIFTED Uganda bibs have made it into the store, Banana Boat!! After a lot of hard work from the women, we managed to build a stock pile of about 30 bibs.  I wanted to have 50 bibs on hand but they have become so popular that I kept selling them to random people along the way.  I dropped off the samples to the manager and waited for the email to let us know if they would accept them and sell them in the store.  Within 1 week I got a response and the owner purchased 14 bibs!! I told the LIFTED ladies to pray hard that the bibs would sell and that the store would want to order more.  Two weeks passed and I didn’t hear back from the owner until finally I got an email with an order for 36 bibs!!!  YAY!!!    We were so stoked!!! But since it was just before the holidays we didn’t have many bibs available, so the sew fest began!!! I had 2 of the ladies who were the best trained, come to our house off and on for the week and they busted out all 36 bibs.  It was a lot of work at once but it gave the ladies the chance to perfect their sewing skills and gain some speed too.  We even decided to start practicing on the electric sewing machine that I was given.  We now have 1 lady who is doing very well on the electric machine and another lady who is fantastic at hand stitching.  Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Paska since the stitching and sewing was too difficult for her, but since we gained this store as a hopeful consistent client we were able to bring 2 other ladies on.  We now have Alice in Arua, Mary, Medina, Jane and Miriam all from Kampala who are a part of the Sojourn Community/church. 


Medina is practicing stitching

We are super thrilled about this chance to spread the word about LIFTED bibs! Banana boat is a very popular tourist shop that has 3 locations throughout Kampala.  The store attracks many tourists from around the world and it’s awesome to think that LIFTED bibs are being worn by babies in China, Australia, Spain, Ireland…..the list goes on!!! How cool is that!!


Mary, Katie, and Jane at our house during our SEWFEST!!





2 comments:

  1. Amazing!!! So thankful for this opportunity for LIFTED!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! So great! I'm so glad I found your blog! :)
    I'd love to get in touch and talk Africa with you sometime.

    God bless!

    -Rylie.

    ReplyDelete