M. Ratnamma
Birthday: 1999 
Ratnamma has grown up with 4 siblings, 3 sisters and 1 brother. (Ages 17, 18, 20, 25) Her family lives in a 2 bedroom home. She went to school until the 6th grade. She is now working daily 8 am – 6pm. Her pastor’s family taught her how to sew with a machine. Traveling to do the Global Partners sewing training was the first time out of her village and was one of her happiest memories. One of her greatest dreams is to make enough money to live on without having to depend on others.
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.