Untapped Potential – Hands of Gold

In this month’s edition of featuring champions in our community (iDream - iShare), we feature the work of a young lady by the name Peninah Achieng Owidhi. Penninah lives in Kariobangi South with her family and she learned how to make cards in 2009 at SOS centre in Buru Buru. According to her, the classes were not meant to have a far reaching impact but it was ways of making youths do something a part from idling around.

 Penniah’s case is exception after beating all odds by following her passion after the introduction to card making. She has developed a strong passion in designing through which she express herself, work, dreams, community, clientele needs, events etc. The cards are made using;

• Embossed papers 
• Shaded threads 
• Special needs 
• Beads 
• Pencil 
• Holing pin 
• Print glue 
• Pattern scissors etc.

These cards are specially designed for various occasions like weddings, greetings, valentine etc. Penninah enjoys making cards which are unique and value oriented to anyone that purchase them. You can place an order by defining the color, theme, purpose and style etc, and she will always tweak it with the creative ideas to match your preference. Each design costing depends on the size, time and material used. She will always strive for unique and quality design that you will not find in the supermarket shelves.

Currently Penninah is taking a course at Nairobits School of digital design studying web design and development. She is a passionate designer and most of her work is driven by intrinsic value like passion, creativity and she is always read to share her skills with others. In any creative process you have to be patient and be a good planner for example with the card making it is challenging to get the design right and sometimes you have to strain your eyes using the needle to punch holes in the correct places.

Many young people are blessed with many talents but there are no enough avenues to support creative works originally designed by the youths from the informal settlement. Wilsen Initiative (WI) seeks to mentor, train and inspire youths to be change makers in the larger society using their skills and talents. On the other flip side majority of the youth from informal settlements (slums) are faced with high level of unemployment which contributes to other issues like insecurity, drug abuse, crime, early parenthood etc.

Penniah’s story is an inspiration of how talents and skills can be used to tap into other areas of learning or opportunities. Please support the initiative by ordering customized cards specially designed for you.

You can write to info@wilsenx.com or drop a comment and we shall get back to you. Penninah’s Best Quote: “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”.

Watch out the space many more to come... Support Wilsen Initiative (WI) so that we can promote, inspire and manage talents that is either untapped or not supported.