Fete Lifestyle Magazine April 2017 Fashion Issue | Page 44

his month in Chicago, a planning committee is busy at work arranging the final details of the upcoming 2017 Heshima Kenya Fashion Challenge, one of the hottest and definitely the most rewarding fashion event of the Chicago spring. Fourteen Chicago designers will be randomly paired with Maisha scarves made by one of a group of talented refugee girls from Nairobi and tasked with creating an original outfit inspired by the scarf they are given.

About 13,000 miles away, the girls of Heshima Kenya are among the most vulnerable of refugees. Young, unaccompanied girls who have fled terrorism, war, and unimaginable violence. Many are the victims of sexual assault, and come to us pregnant or with children. Some have stories that film-makers would shy away from as too horrific even for fiction. The monstrous sins of man always outweigh the depths of the imagination.

But today, like many other days since their arrival at Heshima Kenya and admission to the Girls Empowerment Project, they are full of hope. Their education included not only basic primary school, which many lacked before joining the center, but also life skills and vocational training.

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Looking around, all you see is color and life. Congolese, Somali, Ethiopian, Sudanese, Rwandan and Burundi, they have each found this place, Arriving separately, profoundly wounded, they bond together to form a new family during their time here. The students, well on their way to earning their GEP certificate, are singing and dancing, hand in hand with one another and with their children. The Girls Empowerment Project peers are inspired by the student’s achievement, an accomplishment reached despite tremendous obstacles. Here they are taught to be tailors, but what they really become are designers. Many will enter the Maisha Collective, a social enterprise that allows the girls to sell their fabrics and earn and income, preparing them for a lifetime of entrepreneurship and independence in Nairobi or wherever the lucky ones are resettled.