Sewing Their Way To A More Promising Future!
32 Refugee women receive Sewing Machines and Certificates – ASA Graduation Ceremony © 2025
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In skilled hands, fabrics—some with bold prints, others with soft pastels—are turned into useful items such as pillows, totes, necklaces, dresses, skirts and more in Clarkston. Not long ago, these hands of refugee women often stayed idle with few ways to earn a living to help support their families.
Through the Amani Women Center, refugee women are being taught how to use their hands to measure, cut, and sew, transforming fabrics into a variety of goods and earn a living doing so.
On Nov. 23, 31 women—some who fled foreign lands that were war torn or plagued by violence—graduated from the Amani Sewing Academy in Clarkston following a year of training. Attendees at the academy are from Eritrea, Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Burma, Syria, and other countries, according to Doris Mukangu, founder of the center.
“It’s the U.N. [United Nations] in there,” said Mukangu.
The center’s mission is to provide “culturally tailored programs and services that empower and contribute to the economic security, spiritual, mental, and physical well-being of refugees and immigrant women.”
The sewing program, which started in 2016 with two women, now has more than 80 women enrolled. The program charges a $50 monthly fee, but Mukangu said 80 percent of the women have scholarships. The center is funded through the state, county, and city of Clarkston as well as funding from foundations and individual donors.
Mukangu said the genesis for the program came about while she was teaching a healthy nutrition class to refugee women, and they responded that they couldn’t afford to buy healthy items because they didn’t have the financial means to do so.
For many refugee women now living in Clarkston, poultry plants in Gainesville—two hours away—are among the few available and accessible jobs for them, she said.
According to Mukangu, by learning to sew—starting on the type of machines often used at home and moving on to industrial sewing machines—the women are taught skills that can lead them to become entrepreneurs, get hired by companies that need seamstresses or become instructors or a seamstress for the center’s spinoff project Johari Africa, where handmade items are sold.
At the graduation at the Memorial Drive Ministries facility in Stone Mountain, the gymnasium was packed with an estimated 150 family members, friends and community leaders. The women, wearing dresses they had sewn, were presented certificates and a new heavy duty Singer sewing machine.
Clarkston Mayor Beverly Burks applauded the graduates and told them that with their skills and new sewing machines they have hope “and a chance at prosperity,” adding that their “possibilities are endless.”
Mukangu said “You have demonstrated commitment and that you graduate with a skill that’s yours forever.”
Rishan Ghebreab of Eritrea said she pursued the sewing program after working in a bakery as a cake decorator for years, then struggling after an illness.
Completing the training, earning her certificate, and attending graduation was a dream come true, Ghebreab said.
Now she would like to make dresses for others and teach other women here and in her homeland how to sew.
She expressed appreciation to the Amani Women Center for meeting women where they are—regardless of their English proficiency or ability to drive to get to the center.
Sadiqa Rahmani from Afghanistan is another one of the graduates.
“Back in my county, like many women, I faced limitations in what I truly wanted,” said Rahmani via text. “After resettling in the United States, I discovered the Amani Women Center. Although I had some sewing skills that I learned from my elder sister and aunt in Afghanistan, I wanted to refine and improve them. By taking sewing classes, I learned professional techniques and corrected mistakes I didn’t realize I was making before.”
Rahmani said she plans to start her own custom-designed clothing brand for women.
“This is a long-term goal, and it will take time to fully achieve, but the Amani sewing program has prepared me to take the first steps toward making my dream a reality.”
