Gives Back
Sseko Designs provides employment during the nine-month gap between high school and university where high potential young women are able to earn and save enough money to pay for college tuition. Half of their salary each month goes into a savings account that is not accessible until tuition is due. This ensures that their income goes towards education. This also protects the women in Sseko’s program for the social pressure they often feel from their families to give away the money they are earning, which can perpetuate the cycle of poverty. At the end of each term, Sseko Designs grants university scholarships that match up to 100% of the saving each woman has made during her nine-month session with Sseko. To date, Sseko has enabled 47 women to continue on to university.
Fairly Traded
Sseko provide employment (along with access to a comprehensive social impact program) to their team of 50 women in Uganda. Instead of just treating the symptoms, the company aims to address the deeper, underlying issues of extreme poverty. Sseko supports sustainable industry and fair-trade, and believes in the power of responsible consumerism to break people – particularly women – out of cycles of poverty.
In addition to providing employment to women working their way towards university, Sseko provides employment for women who have aged out of the education system and have no other form of income generation. They also partner with a local non-profit in Uganda that works with young women who have recently come out of the commercial sex industry. Providing stable, dignifying, and fair wage employment is a key component to keeping women from entering back into prostitution.