From female sex work to a mother and seamstress
MUKAGASANA Devota, a 38-year-old resident of Muhanga district in Nyamabuye sector, is one of the beneficiaries of the project "Enhancing the livelihood for vulnerable young women" UN women working in MUHANGA and KICUKIRO districts in partnership with YWCA Rwanda.
In 2000, when she finished primary school, MUKAGASANA was raped and impregnated. Since then he has dropped out of school.
As soon as she gave birth in 2001, her parents abandoned and kicked her out.
She started working as a female sex worker so that she could earn a living for her child.
She said, she was often drunk because it helped her to have sex with men she did not know and she had no knowledge about reproductive health, including the use of condoms or birth control, which put her at risk of contaminating sexual transmissible diseases or getting pregnant again.
On the other side, MUKAGASANA would always be arrested by the security forces because he was on the street in the middle of the night.
In 2021, the "Enhancing the livelihood for vulnerable young women" project started its activities in MUHANGA district with the aim of reducing the risk of girls and women who gave birth prematurely and those who are female sex workers as well as other vulnerable women through bringing them in saving groups and helping them with different skills to support improve their lives especially economically.
It was then that MUKAGASANA was enrolled in a project in the female sex worker group where she was taught about reproductive health, joined a savings and loan group and she had the chance to also be enrolled in tailoring 3 months’ apprenticeship, as start of new life from the life she says she was tired of (FSW).
Today, MUKAGASANA is one of the BAHONEZA saving group who works as a seamstress and she is a married woman with 3 children.
She is running a tailoring business, though she rent a sewing machine. She is able to earn 4,000 Frw per day and can save 1,000 per week into her saving group.
She has a vision to acquire hers own sewing machine in order to make a substantial profit and later on she want to establish her own Atelier de couture. She would make good deals but she has limited capital.
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