ARAKELE

Arakele Fashion Design College http://www.arakeleplc.org and https://www.facebook.com/Arakeleplc opened its doors to students in 2014.

In 2012 after a chance meeting with a businessman who found Project Pencil Case online and came to Addis with donated pencil cases from his children, this momentous meeting led to the creation of Arakele!

On the day we were going to meet up to collect the donated pencil cases, we invited our soon to be philanthropist on a trip with us to a school where we were getting students kitted out in uniforms, students who were literally about to drop out of school because their families could not afford uniforms… A chance remark at the end of this outing about wanting to help train women in marketable skills such as sewing and be able to provide school uniforms, was the key link to starting Arakele.

After a business plan outlining a social enterprise business, Arakele was generously seed funded by our Philanthropist and his wife. Arakele was specifically devised to train women from vulnerable backgrounds to learn a skill that would lead to employment which was sewing and design to meet the needs of the expanding textile sector. Arakele has trained cycles of women since 2014 and connected them to employment opportunities including employing graduates at Rama Garment, the production division of Arakele.

Today Arakele continues to train and graduate primarily women from a variety of backgrounds, connecting them to employment opportunities or hiring them to work in our Production department . We are engaged in producing Reusable Period Pad kits for donation to high school girls in need – without these vital products, girls often miss several days of school every month and if they fall behind they can drop out of school altogether….

It costs just 250 etb, 7 usd or 5 gbp to sponsor a kit for a high school girl:

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/arakelecollege