A story of entrepreneurship
A programme alumna who built her own small business after leaving the programme.
About this story: The following narrative is a composite and is representative of the organization's working model. It does not identify real people. The organization publishes real stories on its official site, with anonymized photos or with consent.
Before the business: leaving the programme
Lucía is 26 now and runs a small sewing workshop out of a house in the San Pablo neighbourhood of Asunción. When she talks about her business she describes it in one word: "I started out of necessity." But the way she tells it after that, and the order in which she tells it, shows that the sewing came after several things that don't get improvised.
She entered the programme at age seven, together with her two younger siblings. Her caregiver — a detail she repeats every time she talks about the village — was the first person who asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. "Until that moment, nobody had asked me that question," she says.
She did all her schooling at the village, and in her last two years of secondary school she took part in a sewing workshop the programme organized with an external seamstress. She didn't enjoy it at first — she says the first few weeks she was bad at it and wanted to leave — but her caregiver made her stay. After several sessions, she discovered she actually liked it. That discovery, she says, is what changed the rest of her school years.
What she learned inside the programme that she later used outside
When she left the programme at 18, Lucía had no capital and no professional network. But she repeats three things she learned inside and took with her:
1. Saving
The programme works with a weekly saving practice from the early years. Lucía never saved large amounts, but she learned the mechanics: setting aside a portion before spending. When she started sewing for others, it was that habit that let her put together enough for her first used industrial sewing machine.
2. Costing
The programme's sewing workshop wasn't only sewing. The external seamstress had each student keep a notebook with fabric, thread, time, and selling price. Lucía says that notebook was the one she used most after she left the programme, when she had to set prices for her first garments.
3. A network of people who knew her
What she highlights most isn't a technical skill but having met people. Her house's caregiver stayed in touch after she left. An older alumna from the workshop introduced her to the woman who sold her her first machine. A programme volunteer recommended her for her first client.
How she actually started
For the first two years after leaving the programme Lucía lived with an aunt and sewed on commission from the kitchen: alterations, school uniforms, aprons. She doesn't think of herself as an entrepreneur in that phase — "I just needed an income," she says.
The jump to calling it a business came when she saved up enough for a small shop. She did it with credit arranged by a foundation linked to the programme, topped up with her own savings. Today the workshop has two industrial machines, an overlock, and two people who help her: a programme alumna she met at an alumni gathering, and a cousin who learned the trade from her.
What the story doesn't show
Not everyone who leaves the programme starts a business. Not everyone who wants to start one makes it. Most alumni work in formal employment, many in trades they learned inside the programme, several are still studying. Those who do start businesses typically do so at a very small scale, with their own capital or small loans, and the first two or three years are the most fragile.
This story describes a path that exists, not a typical outcome. The programme publicly states that it supports alumni labour-market insertion, but it doesn't guarantee economic results.
What the organization says about its work with alumni
- The alumni programme formally exists and accompanies those who went through residential care up to age 24, with extensions depending on the case.
- The organization publishes on its site that this accompaniment includes support for technical training, job search, and in some cases support for entrepreneurship.
- The exact number of programme alumni who have started a business is not published by the organization and is not asserted on this site.