The apartment that Um Ahmed shares with her six children and elderly father is small, run down, and sparsely furnished.  Yet after being forced out of her home by factional fighting with only the clothes on her back, this Iraqi widow will do anything to keep her apartment and avoid living on the street.Um Ahmed is just one of many who LIFE for Relief and Development has sought to help with a project that allows women a dignified way of earning a living, while producing goods that can be beneficial to others.  

Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, LIFE operated a series of sewing workshops where needy Iraqi women earned a fair income through their talents as seamstresses.  With a generous donation of 275 rolls of netting material by AmeriCares, LIFE reactivated its own sewing workshops in 2007 and reached out to other workshops run by charities and social organizations as well.  The goal was to turn the donated netting into badly needed mosquito nets.  These nets protect against mosquitoes that carry deadly diseases like malaria.

The seamstresses collectively bargained with LIFE over the terms of the project, agreeing on a fair price for each mosquito net produced, and also agreeing that LIFE would donate 5% of the profits to the social organizations and charities to which the seamstresses belonged.

Um Ahmed, desperate to earn enough money to keep her apartment, was the first to sign up, despite the fact that she didn’t even own a sewing machine.  She borrowed a machine, took it home, and worked shifts with her son to produce as many nets as possible.  When a project official picked up her first batch of nets and attempted to pay her, she refused, stating, “Please collect the money for me and pay me at the end of the month so that I can be sure to pay my rent.” 

Thanks to this project, Um Ahmed, along with the 84 other widows who made mosquito nets, was able to earn enough money to meet her financial needs.  And thanks to these women, the 275 rolls of netting were turned into 39,847 mosquito nets, which were distributed to orphanages, hospitals, retirement homes, families in rural areas of Iraq, and elsewhere, saving perhaps thousands of people from malaria or other mosquito-borne diseases.