Women on Wheels Vocational Training
Empowering refugee women in Kampala with tailoring, entrepreneurship, and financial management skills. Through free, hands-on training and trauma-informed support, participants gain the tools, confidence, and mental well-being needed to build sustainable livelihoods and transform their futures.
What's the issue:
Refugee Women
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Mental Health Crisis
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Capital and financing
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Uganda's Unemployment
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Language Gaps
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Social Networks and Resourcing
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Many refugees, particularly women, arrive in Uganda with intense stress, trauma, language gaps, social networks, limited job histories, and non-transferable skills, making it difficult to find opportunities for employment, life in a new country.
The Women on Wheels Vocational Training Program is a comprehensive, trauma-informed initiative designed to equip vulnerable refugee women in Kampala with vocational skills, business literacy, and financial independence. Through intensive training in tailoring, combined with a practical 12-module curriculum in entrepreneurship and financial management, the program aims to transform the economic futures of refugee women and their households. At no cost, participants receive hands-on training in tailoring, along with all necessary equipment, materials, and tools, including sewing machines and fabrics. Training is delivered by experienced instructors and mentors, ensuring that each participant gains both technical skills and the confidence to use them in real-world settings.
We also embed mental health workshops into SEF’s Women on Wheels vocational training program, which serves 150+ refugee women in tailoring and fashion design. These workshops are intentionally designed to provide psychological safety, create trauma-informed support networks, and offer safe spaces for participants to express themselves, reduce stress, and form meaningful, long-term relationships with peers who share similar life experiences.
Combining these efforts, with great care, centering the needs and voices of our community, we are committed to:
1. Contribute and accelerate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Goal 1 and Goal 10, End Poverty through Reduced Inequalities; income inequalities for vulnerable refugees, especially women.
2. Provide additional psychological rings of support to vulnerable refugees currently on a journey to heal the wounds caused by conflict, and furthermore, grow their network and form key friendships, relationships for life.
3. Boost refugee women's confidence and competence to run and manage small-medium income-generating activities, equipping them tools, connections and resources needed to achieve a great sense of self-reliance.
