I went to Newtown thinking I was signing up for a simple sewing lesson. I left thinking about economic dignity.
Inside the SANZAF Skills Centre in Johannesburg, the hum of sewing machines competes with conversation and instruction. Patterns are carefully traced. Fabric is measured twice before it is cut. And beginners like me are quickly humbled.
Sewing, it turns out, is much harder than it looks.
The class forms part of a broader empowerment programme run by SANZAF, a charity organisation that has expanded its focus beyond relief into social entrepreneurship. What stood out immediately is that this is not framed as charity work. It is framed as opportunity.
“We are here at our SANZAF social entrepreneurship water bottling section. This is one of the projects that we set up to train people on how to do basic skills,” Javed Hoosen from SANZAF explained as he walked us through the facility. “This is all part of the empowerment project that SANZAF focuses on allowing them to earn a decent income.”
The sewing room is just one piece of a much bigger ecosystem. In another section, bottled water is being prepared and labelled. In yet another, food is being cooked as part of community soup kitchens. Each project is designed not only to serve a need, but to teach a skill.
Hoosen is clear about the philosophy behind it.
“We need to create opportunities and platforms for people where they come in, where they learn, where they belong, where they grow and where they are able to give back,” he said.
That sense of belonging is deliberate. Many of the women and young people who come through the centre arrive with basic abilities but no pathway to turn those skills into income. The goal here is to bridge that gap.
“If you come in and you have a basic skill, how do you take that skill and turn that into something that people really want?” Hoosen asked. “The idea is people should buy and support the project not because they feel sorry, no, because it is a sympathetic welfare project. This is a project where people actually learn skills and they apply their mind and they craft.”
That distinction matters. In a country grappling with high unemployment, especially among young people and women, the difference between handouts and marketable skills can determine whether someone remains dependent or becomes self sustaining.
The centre’s work extends into schools and youth programmes as well. “Some of the few projects that we mentioned that you may have seen in the green bus include opportunities for skills development for kids at schools, from nursery schools, aftercare facilities, tuition programmes, feeding to keep the kids happy, nutritious and at schools,” Hoosen said. “We also focus on empowerment in terms of the youth. They get involved in the soup kitchens that we run, flipping the food, developing their food safety skills, allowing them to explore culinary options and to get placed outside of SANZAF.”
Back in the sewing room, my uneven stitching is proof that mastery takes time. But that is precisely the point. Skill building is slow. It requires patience, repetition and guidance.
I may not be launching a fashion line anytime soon, but the experience offered something more valuable than a finished garment. It offered a window into a model of community development that centres dignity, enterprise and belonging.
In a city that often feels defined by inequality, spaces like this quietly stitch together something different.
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