Sewing With Nancy

Restoring hope though sewing that's the intent of today's featured organization. This restoration is accomplished by teaching sewing skills that will enable the students to support themselves and their children. This all takes place half way around the world in Ghana, with the help of enthusiastic volunteers from Point Hope. Please welcome Leslie Gemignani. She's here to explain how we can restore hope through sewing in Africa, welcome. Hi Nancy, thank you for having me on. We have an incredible program that we're starting over there. They've already had a year of being taught sewing, batiking. They're learning this to empower themselves to become these young ladies who are absolutely wonderful to give their children, and themselves a life, a reason for being. This place is in Ghana, and it's a refugee camp. It is a refugee camp that's about to close. It's been 20 years, I believe, in the making with this camp. Now there's 22,000 people that are going to be misplaced, homeless. Our founder, Delilah Rene, she went over there and found 40 acres of land, and she started a village. And in this village, they have many facets. What we're going to talk about is the classes that you're teaching people. Two types, sewing and batik making. Yes, yes. You make batiks that can be personalized. In any way, shape, form. Any designs. The batik making is done in, of course, the 100 degree temperature. Oh, yes. It's not for the faint hearted, is it? Not even a little bit, no. And yet these ladies when you see the picture you'll be amazed-- And they stamp with wax reliefs on the muslin fabric. On the fabric, yes. They heat everything in boiling, boiling wax. They put their stamps into the wax. They place them onto these fabrics. After the wax is dry, they put it into the dye and it comes out with these absolutely beautiful beautiful colors. Then they have to rinse out the wax so that you can see the relief area. But what beautiful batiks that they have. They are absolutely beautiful. You told me that on Fridays at the camp everyone wears a uniform. Yes, this is our Friday uniform. The children wear it, the adults wear it. This is their day of school their day of, I guess, welcoming Point Hope into their lives because it's made such a big difference so far. You know, and this is just-- It is a voice for forgotten children. It's wonderful and everybody looks adorable wearing the clothes. I'm sure they do! You're going to be going to Ghana soon and you're going to be teaching sewing. I'm hoping to come up with a second-year curriculum with them to help them finish what they've learned to do. Right now, they're learning to sew on hand-cranked sewing machines. Anybody who knows about those knows how difficult that is. These young ladies they have done a magnificent job. This is one of our tablecloths, and they've batiked it and then they do the silk screening. On the top. This is a symbol that you have through Point Hope and through Ghana. Yes, the symbol is, "Accept God" because without God, nothing is possible. They live in dire straits and you are giving them some encouragement and learning abilities. We are trying to teach them to be able to-- On the sewing aspect of it, we're trying to teach them how to do patterning, how to do finishing work. They have nothing. These women have nothing. They need sewing machines. They need fabric. They need these things so that they can build what they've got going. You mentioned a really nice thing and that is that we all sew and quilt for creative purposes and this something that has value. because they can express their creativity just like we do. Oh, they do, and it's amazing. I fell in love with this. It's adorable. This is a tooth fairy pillow. These are some of the different colors and some of the batiks that they've used to make them. They're just absolutely adorable. They certainly don't have tooth fairies there. No, they really don't. They had no idea what they were! It's amazing seeing all the detail that goes into it the child, the hair, it's just beautiful. I love it. These women, they have learned this. They're learning, making bags. We're hoping to start something where we can use the colors from different states and making like a backpack. What a wonderful way of giving hope through sewing and through fabric making. Thank you for telling us, Leslie. Thank you so much for having us here. You're very welcome. If you'd like to learn more about Point Hope

simply go to

nancyzieman.com where you'll find steaming videos of all our programs, my interview with Leslie. Just click on Nancy's Corner, the 2600 series and you will be able to find information on Point Hope and how, perhaps you could be involved in this great program. I hope you'll join us next time. Thank you for joining us on "Fancy Footworks," part three. Bye for now.