Marthamma
Birthday: 1988
Marthamma’s parents work in the fields. She has 7 siblings. She never attended school, as a child she looked after her house and prepared meals for her family each day, mainly rice. She got married at the age of 15 and soon after started working in the fields with her husband. They labor over chili peppers selling them for $2 per day. Her house is small with a stick roof. She walks 1 kilometer to get water, where there is always a long waiting line. It takes her a minimum of 45 minutes each time to get water. She cooks on fire and sticks for her family. She has 4 children ages 3, 5, 7, and 10. She was bit by a poisonous snake when she was pregnant and gave God the glory for healing it. Her dream is to start her own sewing business.
It is often said, “If you feed a man a fish, you can feed him for a day, but if you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
We look for avenues to equip women and men in poverty with the opportunity to start a business of their own that can help them provide fortheir basic needs of food, shelter, and education for their families for a lifetime.
Their businesses also invest into large projects we are doing in their communities and throughout the world.
In 2012 we launched our first sewing microbusiness training, teaching 21 impoverished women how to start a sewing business of their own. Through donations from Proceeds for Poverty and other one-time gifts, we buy a sewing machine and iron for each trainee.
We train them in simple business principles and sewing skills that will help them begin a seamstress business in their communities and villages.
We also train them to make products for GPPD that we will give away for a donation. Once they earn a portion of the cost of their machines by making a few products for us, we then pay them for each additional product they make.
The proceeds we receive from any donations for the products go toward a larger project to help people in poor communities throughout the world, a fee for labor, shipping the product (if neccesary) and the cost of the materials.