Shahnaz Nagle met a group of refugees in Dallas during a visit in 2010. After learning about some of their difficulties and barriers in the U.S., she decided that helping refugees was important, but at the time she couldn’t find much information about how to do that in Austin.

After her mother passed away in 2015, she felt strongly about passing along something that her mother had taught her and that she loved – sewing. She connected with the Syrian American Refugee Aid organization (SARA) in 2016 which allowed her to set her plan in motion. She started Arefa Sewing School, named after her mother to honor her memory.

The school teaches sewing from the basic steps to advanced with the plan for the refugee women attending to become professional seamstresses. Most of the women attending may have had experience using manual sewing machines but need to learn how to operate electric machines. The majority of students had never had formal sewing lessons, so Shahnaz and her volunteer teachers have to re-teach the basics.

The school also takes in alterations and sewing jobs at reasonable prices. Refugee women in the school are assigned work once they have had at least 12 classes. All the proceeds from the work go to the refugee women.

After every class, the students are graded on their assignments. The students whose work meets a certain standard are given customer work.  Also the work is distributed according to the level of difficulty. Prospective clients connect via email – refugeesewing@gmail.com.

Shahnaz knows that many refugee women have difficulty earning money because of language and transportation barriers, and because they are tied to their home while caring for young children.  She had also witnessed how the skill of sewing has been able to lift women in other countries out of poverty. She saw that refugee women here could learn this work without language proficiency or even literacy skills.

The group meets every Saturday morning from 10AM to noon at Abacus Brain Gym on Spiceewood Springs Road.  The majority of the students are from Afghanistan. Others come from Syria and Iraq. They currently have a waiting list for the school since they have space constraints.

Shahanaz is asked often about expanding and starting other locations, but lack of funding has so far kept this from happening. The school runs completely on volunteer power and donations.

They are in need of their own space as well as more sewing teachers, volunteers, interpreters and drivers so that they could help more people. They are happy to give volunteer hours to students who need them.

For more information check their Facebook page and their website.