In one of the poorest countries in the world, an American entrepreneur is empowering women and girls to stay in school and become household earners.
Employing women as seamstresses with a generous benefits package to sew school uniforms—one of the highest financial barriers to entry into the school system—two generations of females benefit.
The not-for-profit socially-minded enterprise is called Style Her Empowered, acronym SHE, and was founded by Payton McGriff who began her journey as a senior at the University of Idaho seeking a place in the market to start a business for a class project.
Remembering a book she had read two years earlier, called Half the Sky, which looked at rates of female enrollment in primary school around the world, she was inspired to find market solutions to the problem of over 100 million girls worldwide stuck in their society’s educational dereliction.
As it happened, a professor she knew at University was from the West African country of Togo, and he encouraged McGriff to travel to his hometown of Nôtse on a scouting mission over spring break.
She learned that not only do 69% of households live under the poverty line, but most of the household chores fall upon women and girls. On top of this, the cost of buying new school uniforms made it almost impossible for a child in this part of the world to make it all the way from first to twelfth grade.
“Every girl stood up and raised her hand so high and, not only that, told a very expressive story about how she had been shamed out of school because she didn’t have her uniform,” McGriff, now a 2024 CNN Hero, recalled to the news outlet, explaining how she surveyed schoolgirls for the largest challenges to staying in school.
“I realized, ‘Okay, this is a place to start.’”
The dresses made at SHE are simple, culturally appropriate, and come with extra fabric tucked into the hem that can be quickly released to elongate the dress up to 6 sizes. cords running down the sides of the dress allow it to be adjusted to fit any body shape.
ENTREPRENEURS MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE:
- Sun-Powered Portable Factory Manufactures Zero-Emission Plastic Goods Anywhere There’s Trouble
- All-Female Auto Repair Shop Lets Clients Get Mani-Pedis While Waiting For Their Cars
- Entrepreneur Designs Shoes That Expand As Children Grow, Building Great Business (Watch)
- Friends Saved Over a Million Gallons of Paint From Landfill by Rescuing and Remixing it to Give it New Color
- Nigerian Mom Designs Solar-Powered Cribs That Put an End to Baby Jaundice Disease
SHE operates two factories in Togo where seamstresses make 75% more than the minimum wage, and enjoy a comprehensive Western-style benefits package. McGriff manages the business from Idaho, but her early collaborators make up all the middle managers, ensuring that the people reacting to the environment and needs at ground zero are those who were born into the social and cultural environment.
“The vision for starting SHE was always for it to become locally led because local women understand the challenges and the solutions far better than I ever could,” McGriff told CNN. “I may have struck the original match that started SHE. But what I’m so beyond inspired by is watching our team carry the torch.”
Today, SHE serves Nôtse and 20 other rural villages, and because there’s no trash service to any of these places, all leftover textile scraps are recycled into menstrual pads to address another major barrier to entry for students.
At the moment, SHE has an ongoing GoFundMe that’s seeking to raise $25,000 in donations to enroll another 500 girls in its program, for which a $50 donation provides a full year of education for a girl in one of the villages, including school uniform, supplies, and tuition.
WATCH the mini-doc on SHE below from CNN Heroes…
SHARE This Incredible Social Enterprise Transforming A Place You Didn’t Know Existed…