My name is Glory. I’m 29 and I come from Nigeria. Ten years ago I tried to emigrate to Europe, but that didn’t work out – so now I’m living back in Nigeria. I received some assistance to set up my own fashion label. This is my story:

My family urgently needed money when I was 19 years old. People smugglers promised to get my mother, me and my brother Frank to Europe. The plan was for us to work there and send money back to our family in Nigeria. But we were abducted and taken to Libya, and what we experienced there was horrible. Luckily I was freed after three years and the police arranged for me to go to the United Nations camp, where a church organisation enabled me to return to Nigeria. My brother also managed to escape.

I took on casual jobs back in Nigeria and even washed dishes. Then a friend told me about the Nigerian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration and Reintegration (NGC) who offered me career guidance. I really wanted to be involved in the fashion industry. The three-month training course in tailoring was just right for me, and my brother attended this training course as well.

The NGC then provided us with sewing machines and help us to register our own company. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) rented a studio room for us, so now we are self-employed. We develop and sew fashion items. Frank specialises in men's fashion and I tailor made-to-measure women's fashion and also sew clothes for babies.

It really is a dream come true. I’m my own boss, which makes me feel brave and self-confident. The quality of life in Nigeria is probably not the best in the world, but it is my home country. I can make a go of it here and would like to establish my own fashion school in the future. My aim is to get disadvantaged youths off the streets, because if they have opportunities in their own country they won’t even think about emigrating. They also won’t end up in the hands of people traffickers.

As of: 12/2020