Annalie

To her neighbors in Nairobi, Annalie, a mother of three, is a successful and skilled tailor. However, few know about her struggles as a refugee. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Annalie and her husband fled to Kenya, where they experienced extreme hardship. “We experienced dire poverty in Kenya – the kind of poverty I never imagined existed before. The kind of poverty where we had no mattress, no blankets; our clothes were tattered, and our family was malnourished to a point where the children fell severely ill,” she explains.

As a trained tailor interested in starting a business but lacking the means, Annalie was one of RefugePoint’s first business development clients. With a grant from RefugePoint, she was able to buy a sewing machine in 2011. As she began saving, RefugePoint referred her for an interest-free loan through KivaZip, which enabled her to expand her business even further. Annalie now provides for her family and is saving for the future. She has a stronger feeling of security than at any time in her more than two decades in Kenya. “Business has really helped me. It rescued my family from poverty,” she says.