‘Creating hope one job at a time’
In this blog post, we explore one of our clients, Made by Mosaic (MBM), which is a job creation initiative for foster parents that are part of Mosaic Community Developments, an organisation with a vision to see that every orphan and vulnerable child across Africa has a loving and caring family. MBM, which creates leather products such as handbags, toiletry bags, purses and bespoke items, is based in Potchefstroom, Northwest, and they also have a mini bakery in Wellington, Western Cape.
The manager of the MBM initiative, Terry Niemack, says in an interview with The Small Business Site that the business was started to provide foster parents with constructive work and a safe environment where they can learn and grow without having to deal with “corporate” issues. “We also needed to help our foster moms earn a stable income to properly be able to take care of their families.”
Each employee of MBM is currently taking care of two or more orphaned and vulnerable children. Sannah is the lead leather seamstress and is responsible for training all the staff in leatherworks. She was Mosaic’s first foster parent and is a single mom caring for four foster children. Dorah has been working at MBM for the past nine years and cares for two foster children, one of whom has a disability. “I am extremely happy being part of the MBM team as I have developed a lot of knowledge, experience and skills.”
Elizabeth has two kids of her own and also fosters two. “I have been working at MBM for four years and I feel very happy to be working here,” she says. Pinki started off in the bakery nine years ago, then progressed to the leatherworks where she forms an integral part of the support staff to the sewing team. She is a single mom and takes care of four children.
Pretty and her siblings grew up as foster children in the Mosaic programme and she now works as an administrator at MBM. She’s always happy to help – no matter where – to make sure everything goes according to plan at MBM. She does all this while caring for her 8-month-old nephew while her sister is at university. Danny joined the team a few years ago as the bakery manager and now takes care of the administration, training and development areas as the operations manager.
The team uses our leather, available in various colours such as Diesel Brown, Diesel Toffee, Diesel Black, Diesel tobacco, Mustard, and Olive Green, to make their handmade range of quality products.
When you support Made by Mosaic you are supporting foster moms, helping them to take care of their families in a dignified and sustainable way.
