06 programmes
The programmes are built as a continuum, not a menu. A woman usually enters through training and stays connected through the SACCO, alumni mentorship and education support for her children.
Eight weeks of applied business training running alongside the craft curriculum.
Pricing, record keeping, customer retention, supplier relationships, mobile money, informal tax. Every trainee leaves with a written business plan for her own salon, mobile service or home practice, signed off by her mentor, not pulled from a template.
Outcome, 76 percent of graduates are the primary earner for three or more dependants.
Three to six months of hands-on braiding certification taught by working Kibuli stylists, most of them alumni of earlier cohorts.
Cornrows, twists, locs, weaves, and care for natural hair. Each trainee builds a portfolio on paying practice clients before she graduates, so her first week as a professional is not her first week with a client in the chair.
Outcome, more than 250 women trained. 85 percent business rate in year one.
On graduation each woman receives a professional starter kit. Not a voucher, a functioning business on day one.
A braiding chair, mirror, combs, capes, pricing cards, an opening stock of synthetic hair and, where the business plan calls for it, a small mobile cash float. Everything she needs to take her first paying client the week she graduates.
Outcome, more than 100 alumni businesses. 32 full-time positions created for other women.
A Savings and Credit Cooperative owned by its members. A bank the women own, on terms the women set.
Graduates contribute a weekly share, build a savings record, then unlock UGX 100,000 to 500,000 in launch capital on community-set terms a commercial bank would never offer a woman with no collateral. The fund is owned by its members, so what it earns stays with the women, not a bank shareholder. A permanent financial home after training ends.
Outcome, 167 percent average household income rise in year one.
Scholarships and school-fee assistance for the children of beneficiaries, prioritising girls.
When a mother's income rises, we make sure the uplift reaches the next generation. Uniforms, fees, books, and mentoring through secondary school. The programme exists so that a mother's earnings stay in the home rather than collapsing into emergency school fees.
Outcome, mothers' earnings stay in the home rather than collapsing into crisis.
ICT and smartphone literacy for alumni, plus advocacy work with refugee settlements, local government and faith partners.
Mobile money, online marketing to reach diaspora clients, WhatsApp business accounts. A graduate who can be found on WhatsApp and Instagram earns roughly three times what she earns on walk-ins alone.
Outreach into Nakivale, Kyaka II and Adjumani settlements alongside four core districts.
Why hair braiding
Hair braiding is often dismissed as informal, feminine, invisible work. Those qualities are exactly what make it one of the most powerful tools for economic inclusion available to us.
No papers. No schooling. No language requirement. A business that fits around a woman's life, not one that asks her to fit around it.
Find us online, write to info@tshanifoundation.org, or call +256 787 391 380 (Uganda) or +353 85 762 4323 (Ireland).
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