Supporting and empowering women in Kenya and Bangladesh as they knit their way to a brighter future.
The Kenana Knitters
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Founded in 1998 in Njoro, Kenya; Kenana Knitters was set up by Patricia Nightingale to to help rural women find some much needed form of income using their spinning and knitting skills. Kenana Knitters was founded on the premise of “changing lives stitch by stitch.”
The primary purpose of Kenana is to support women in the local community, by directly providing them with a source of income, thus enabling them to improve the quality of their own lives as well as those of their extended families. Kenana Knitters is dedicated to supporting the local community by empowering over 300 rural Kenyan women to knit a brighter future for themselves and their families.
Currently, Kenana supports over 300 knitters as well as over 200 spinners who hand spin the wool into yarn using recycled bicycle wheels made into spinning wheels.
Knitting is ideal within the local community as it requires minimal equipment and can be done in snatches of times within the context of their daily lives.
The Hathay Bunano Artisans
Shortly after arriving in Bangladesh in 2004, Samantha Morshed started Hathay Bunano,a not for profit organization. Through a local NGO she invited 12 young women to her home in Dhaka and taught them to knit in her spare room. After three weeks of practicing knitting they started to work on the first order. Seven years later they are employing over 2,000 women artisans in rural Bangladesh. The women craft their toys by crocheting and knitting. Hathay Bunano provides fairly paid, good quality, flexible and local employment to disadvantaged rural women. Hathay Bunano, means "handmade" or "hand-knitted" in Bangla.