In the one-year intensive program, women in the Sewing Circles learned clothing design and pattern drafting, tailoring, machine and hand-knitting, machine and manual embroidery.

The most insidious of our inherited beliefs is that men are full human beings with the power to think, decide, and earn, and women are of little more value than the cows they milk. Because of this traditional belief, women are trained for no work except back-breaking chores. Hauling water from outlying wells hours a day, young girls and women collectively are Kembatta's potable water system. Yet, such unpaid labor is not included in the nation‚s GNP. On these out-of-balance balance sheets designed to measure a nation's financial worth, women are invisible when it comes to the bottom line, literally unaccounted for.

Integral to our every effort is helping our people, particularly our women, find ways to make a living. How can we ask respected women elders to give up the age-old practice of FGM when this is their only source of income? We must train them for other work. Today, we are educating such women to the dangers of FGE, and some are beginning to speak out against it. As soon as funding is available, we hope to train them as HIV/AIDS educators and birth attendants who work in communities KMG can't easily reach.

Today, there is little in Kembatta in the way of jobs to reward young women for getting an education. About 50 of the region"s brightest high school graduates asked KMG to help them learn and practice their chosen trade: sewing (traditionally a man's work in Ethiopia). Using foot-treadle sewing machines and knitting machines, they're now learning to embroider, knit, and draft patterns, in KMG's new Skills Center.

Shoppers prepare to purchase some of the garments created by the Sewing Circles.

KMG is not training them for factory jobs; there is little industry. These young women are learning entrepreneurship and helping KMG build a self-financing Business Center in Durame township for allied rent-paying local businesses. Plans include a cafeteria, education center, and outdoor stands which women can rent to sell their clothing, produce, and other products.

Once fully funded and built, the Business Center will also have telephones, photocopiers and internet access, providing secretarial and communication services not publicly available in the region's commercial center. Classes are already underway at the KMG Center to help women (and some men) learn how to operate, maintain, and repair computers, skills very few Kembatta people know today.

Women participating in a Skills Training workshop on the steps of the KMG training facility.

Once completed, the Business Center will have telephones, photocopiers and Internet access, providing secretarial and communication services not now publicly available in the region’s commercial center. Classes are underway at the KMG Center to help women (and some men) learn how to operate, maintain, and repair computers. Women helping themselves, helping each other, helping their communities.