Zawadi didn’t go to school because her mother wasn’t able to care for her family, so she had to work on a neighbor’s farm to provide the very basics for her 7 brothers and sisters. At 16 she had her first child and now at 24 she has five.

Determined to make a better life for her children and break out of the cycle of subsistence farming she was born into, Zawadi knew she needed to be able to read and write and gain some practical income generating skills. She enrolled in Ready for Reading’s Kinyarwanda literacy classes at the center, joined the Mom’s Sewing Project and is turning her life around.

“Thanks to Ready for Reading now I can help my children with homework and read them stories. In the Mom’s Club I learned how to sew. This is the tool to help me start a sewing station to shape my future life.”