Mission Possible

Did you ever wonder about the origin of the richly colored, handcrafted batik shirts that hang from the coffee display cabinet in front of the cash register at Sven’s Café?

The clothing does more than look pretty. It connects Sven’s at 2699 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. in Bay View to a worldwide effort to end human trafficking. It might even prevent young women from becoming prostitutes.

You might ask, how could an embroidered batik shirt do that?

In 2006, Sven’s became an outlet for selling clothing made by Tanzanian women. Sister Stella Storch of Fond du Lac approached Steve Goretzko, owner of Sven’s, about selling the Tanzanian clothing made by students of a sewing school that Storch had founded in northern Tanzania. The goods that hang in Sven’s are made by students at the school, and the proceeds from the sale of these items are donated back to the school. 

“I went to Milwaukee with the clothes. [Goretzko] was immediately open to it and was willing to help,” Storch said. “He sold Mt. Meru coffee, which comes from Tanzania, and I think that made him more open to selling the items I had…He has really been my very faithful salesperson.”

Goretzko said he has been roasting coffee for the Mt. Meru project since 2005 and also sells Storch’s clothing because he wants to help these causes.

Storch began the Tanzanian sewing school in 2004 as a means to help female AIDS orphans learn a trade and become economically self-sufficient. The sewing school has already graduated between 15 and 20 young women from its three-year sewing program and at any given time enrolls around 30 students.

Storch became aware of the ravages of AIDS when she visited Tanzania for the first time in 2000. Storch realized then that a generation of parents had been decimated by AIDS, which had left another generation orphaned.

The plight of these orphans came into sharper focus for her in 2001, when Storch, who is coordinator for justice, peace, and ecology for the Sisters of St. Agnes in Fond du Lac, worked on behalf of the congregation to help found UNANIMA International. UNAMIMA, a non-government organization (NGO) at the United Nations, advocates on behalf of women and children living in poverty, immigrants and refugees, and the welfare of the planet. UNANIMA’s special mission is to end the trafficking of women and children.

Storch said through her work on UNANIMA she learned that the most likely targets for trafficking involved women who were living in poverty, who were looking for a better life. She reasoned that the AIDS orphans she had met in Tanzania, who were poor and parentless, could be particularly vulnerable to the blandishments and false promises of predatory human traffickers. She said traffickers often approach impoverished young women with promises of jobs in Germany or the United States, but then the women end up sexually exploited in a brothel or sweatshop in their country or another.

Over of a period of time, Storch puzzled over how she might best help these young women. She wanted to do something positive to prevent them from being trafficked. Storch finally decided that a sewing school would be a good vehicle for accomplishing this.

She first contacted her Tanzanian friend, Sr. Hellen Bandiho, whom Storch had befriended when Bandiho was a graduate student in Madison in the early ’90s, and asked if Bandiho would be interested in starting a sewing co-op for young women.

Bandiho agreed.

That was the beginning of the Empowering Women’s Future: AIDS Orphan Sewing Project located in Bukoba, Tanzania. The project is cosponsored by the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, of Sinsinawa, Wis. (a tiny town just across the border from Dubuque, Iowa) and the Sisters of St. Therese of the Child Jesus in Bukoba.

Storch kicked off the project by doing something she does well. She got out her knitting needles and knitted more than 100 scarves herself. She sold the scarves and sent the proceeds to Tanzania where the money was used to buy the first sewing machine for the project.

“Now what we have is a three-year sewing school. When the girls graduate, they are given a treadle machine to take back to their villages,” Storch said. The foot-powered sewing machines are very practical for work in the villages, which are often without electricity or have spotty service.

By giving young women a job, skills, and a means to make a living to support an extended family, Storch said her school provides a meaningful step in preventing the girls from ever getting entangled with human traffickers.

“I asked one of the graduates who now has a shop on the edge of town, ‘Are you able to earn enough for your upkeep and to assist your siblings?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ At that point, I felt like a mother having given birth,” Storch said.

Local Steps, Global Problem

About half the money Storch raises includes revenues from sales of clothing items made by the students and the sales of other items, such as Christmas cards made from the bark of a banana tree. The rest comes from donations, and sometimes from grants Storch has secured.

In a good year, Storch said she has collected as much as $20,000 for the project. She said 2009 has not been a good year because one of the project’s grants was greatly reduced, and the other one was not funded at all because the group’s investments had been devalued in the economic downturn. Storch estimates that she has purchased about 40 sewing machines over the years, at a cost of $200 each.

The goods are sold at craft fairs in the Fond du Lac area, at Storch’s Dominican mother house in Sinsinawa, the Just Fare Market in Fond du Lac, and Sven’s in Bay View.

Storch’s work on the AIDS Orphan Sewing Project is independent of her role with the Sisters of St. Agnes. It was an idea she put into action herself.

“It was just a need I saw, and I just did it. It kind of baffles me that I did it,” she said, adding that many people have helped her, including Goretzko.

Storch said that her family emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1952, when she was just 8, seeking a better life.

“War, depression, and more war, and then the aftermath of war, was what my parents knew,” she said.

Storch’s success in establishing the sewing school demonstrates how it is possible for individual people to alleviate some of the suffering caused by a thorny and ubiquitous scourge like human trafficking. Storch’s approach seems downright neighborly.

What is human trafficking?

Human trafficking, as defined by the United Nations, is a modern-day form of slavery that consists of the illegal trade of human beings through force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. The U.S. State Department estimates that some 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked each year.

AIDS Orphan Sewing Project

If you are interested in donating to the AIDS Orphan Sewing Project, checks can be made out to Sr. Stella Storch or Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa and mailed to Storch at 200 Southlake Cr. Apt. D, Fond du Lac, WI  54935. Inquiries may be directed to (920) 907-2315 or to sstorch@csasisters.org. Donations are most welcome. It is too expensive to ship sewing machines or fabric to Africa. A treadle sewing machine costs approximately $200.