Bezzy, our hero

Jul 6th, 2011 4:03 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

Barrett Ward is the founder of fashionABLE, a Nashville-based fashion company that does trade with Africa in order to bolster economic opportunities for the most vulnerable. In this blog post, he writes about one of his workers, Bezuayhu.

Bezuayhu parents died when she was a girl, so she stayed with her grandparents. They wanted her to work as opposed to attending school, so she left for the capital city. Unable to find her way in the city as a teenager, the predators of the sex industry brought Bezuayhu the false promise of hope in the form of prostitution. Her life was having to give herself to dirty men for less than a dollar at best, and facing the threat of being beaten and raped as an occupational hazard.

The rehabilitation program that my company, fashionABLE, helps to fund gave her the opportunity to get off the streets, and she took it. When Bezuayhu was 19 years old, we trained her to be a weaver, and now with great satisfaction, she says “I am so proud to be called a scarf maker.”

Giving people the opportunity to earn one’s own income and have a skill has a transforming effect on dignity. I love being around Bezuayhu. She is quiet, strong, humble, noble — the character of someone who has thrived beyond unconscionable circumstances. To those of us who affectionately call her “Bezzy,” she is very much a hero.

This video is a testimony to Bezuayhu’s beauty, and to the transformation that can happen when we give people an opportunity. Watch the video above and see for yourself.

TAGS: AGOA, Ethiopia, ONE