Sewing Project
Rationale behind JWOC’s Sewing Project
One of the central tenets of JWOC’s mission in South East Asia is to provide people with opportunities to improve their lives that they would not be able to access under normal circumstances. Providing people, who have the enthusiasm to learn but lack the resources, with free access to education is therefore one of the primary goals we strive to fulfill. With the opening of the JWOC Community Center in Siem Reap in May 2009, JWOC has been given the potential to considerably expand the variety of educational opportunities it can offer to members of the local community. Vocational training to provide people with the skills they need to improve their chances of finding employment, or indeed to start their own businesses, is one of the main areas where JWOC wants to expand. The first step in this expansion has been the creation of vocational courses in sewing.
December 2009-January 2010 - JWOC vocational sewing course: The end of 2009 marked the graduation of twelve of our sewing students through JWOC's Intermediate course. On Christmas day many people turned out to celebrate their achievement and watch them receive their certificates and learn a little more about the sewing course. JWOC would like to say a big thank you to Janet and Allen Johnson, whose very generous sponsorship made this opportunity possible for this group of students. The new year has seen the beginning of another course with a new group of twelve students starting out.
We are delighted to announce the completion of our second sewing course at JWOC. To read about it click here!
JWOC's first course (June-July 2009)
The project began in early June. JWOC was able to enlist the services of an Italian volunteer, Daniela, with experience in design, who arrived in Siem Reap and headed the project. She spent her first few weeks doing research on the local markets, sourcing materials, advertising the new course, interviewing potential students, and preparing the details of the classes. Daniela assembled a dynamic little team to administer the training, including two female JWOC scholarship students who acted as assistants and translaters. There was also one local seamstress on the team who taught the technical aspects of sewing and how to properly use the sewing machines. One final seamstress who recently graduated from another charitable sewing project run by Hotel de la Paix in Siem Reap, helped out, gaining more experience through the training.
The students were chosen from a large group of applicants primarily based on their enthusiasm to learn and current unemployment status. The first week was focused on the basic techniques of sewing and design, and the students were introduced to JWOC's four new sewing machines. They started by hand, learning how to measure, chalk fabric, and stitch, eventually moving on to using the machines. The small project for the first week was to create pencil cases with draw strings attached, which they all completed extremely well!
As the course progressed the students worked extremely hard to develop their knowledge and skills in a number of different ways. Having mastered many of the most basic techniques both in preparing material (for example, drawing straight lines on fabric) and on the machines themselves, the students were challenged to design and cut new products including small bags and cushion covers. They were also required to design and embroider patterns on these products too. As part of the process of achieving this, students were taught about sewing clean lines, sewing stitches and of course, how to apply patterns to materials using the machines. Students also learnt about sewing on zips, buttons and button holes! After looking at some magazine samples the students began to explore their own creativity and asked about how to create flowers with fabric.
At the halfway point in the course, the students went as a group into the center of Siem Reap to a Western Mall to get an idea of other products in the fashion market and to inspire their creative side. The trip to “Lucky Mall” was a great success and the students came back full of ideas. With these ideas fresh in their minds the tailor began to instruct the students about the processes of designing clothes such as women’s shirts and men’s trousers.
In the final weeks of the course the students had the opportunity to learn some basic English words related to fashion and clothes and were introduced to simple marketing ideas such as seasonal collections. All of these ideas would undoubtedly give the students a head-start upon the completion of the course.Students also spent time creating "prototype" articles as well as consolidating and getting invaluable practice in all of the new techniques the students had learnt under the guidance of the seamstress and her assistant.
On Friday 7th August an audience of over 50 including JWOC students, volunteers and friends gathered in the JWOC Community Centre to celebrate the end of the first sewing course. Daniela was able to describe the course to guests and explain how much the students had achieved before they each received their certificate. After the presentation the items, made by the students during the course, were for display and sale with all proceeds returning to the project. The wonderful selection of items showed what an engaging, creative and rewarding six weeks the students had under the guidance of the JWOC team.
We would like to give a special thanks to Lydia and John Dean, Heather and Magnus Kilian, and Marilyn Lembcke for making this Sewing Project possible!
Interested to read more about this course? Read the report by clicking HERE.
