Our Team
Sarah
Sarah’s entrepreneurial spirit, courageous charisma, and relentless care for others serves as the backbone for Jinja Prints’ brand and mission to celebrate African prints, textiles, people, and culture. Despite the many hardships she has had to overcome in her life including: becoming the caretaker of her younger siblings after the death of their mother, running away from an abusive household, becoming pregnant at a young age, and raising her son as a single mother, Sarah continues to persevere with optimism and tenacity. After finding work in a restaurant, Sarah was then able to save enough money to open her own shop in 2015 in Jinja, Uganda which she called “Sarah’s Shop.” Her dream is to open a center for single mothers, like her, to train them with skills that will allow them to independently support themselves and their families.
Betty
Betty learned how to sew from Sarah and now works with the Jinja Print team in Uganda. Her dream is to one day become a midwife so that she can help support pregnant mothers and their babies.
Lydia
Lydia is a single mother of two children and also one of the lead designers for Jinja Prints. It was her idea to make fanny packs, bucket hats and caps. Her dream is to help support other single mothers and their families. And of course, she’s a magician on the sewing machine — check out that design!
Zubenda
Zubenda walked into Sarah’s shop one day while selling bags and told Sarah her husband had abandoned her and that she needed help. She was 8 months pregnant and did not have any money to pay for a doctor to ensure she had a safe delivery. Sarah was moved and gave Zubenda the money she had saved for her son’s kindergarten. Sarah’s son homeschooled for two months and Zubenda had a healthy baby boy. The two have been friends and co-workers ever since that day four years ago.
Esther
Esther is 21 years old and is the mother of a four year old girl named Faith. Her aunt taught her how to sew after her baby was born to give her a skill to support herself and her daughter. Esthers husband’s family kicked her out after she gave birth to a girl instead of a boy, a kind of gender discrimination that Sarah and the team describe as common in their culture. Esther has been working with Sarah for three years now.
Arianne
Arianne partnered with Sarah during the summer of 2020 and is the founder of Jinja Prints. She graduated from Bucknell University with a degree in Managing for Sustainability in May 2020, and was born and raised in Southern California. Arianne studied abroad in Kampala, Uganda during the Spring of 2019 with a focus on social entrepreneurship, design and development — it was during this time that she and Sarah met and bonded over the idea of business as a mechanism for social impact. Little did she know that a year later they would be running their own social enterprise together from two different continents and having an absolute blast every step of the way.