Why Shop the Cause?

When you shop the cause, you are directly helping a woman who is working hard to better her life. You are supporting a woman who is working to escape poverty and seeking to establish greater financial stability for herself and her family.

Martha’s Task exists to help women in poverty situations. Through sewing instruction, we serve women willing to stitch together the fabric of their talents and creative energies to sew up new possibilities; we serve women who courageously cut through old biases to iron out the difficulties of life’s wrinkles.

Women join our program because they face great barriers to traditional employment, including:

• lack of transportation to get to work
• very little previous education
• health problems
• lack of cultural currency stemming from generational poverty

Many potential employers look at these women and see only their shortcomings. While the barriers are serious, our goal is to look past that and see the valuable assets that these women possess—a willingness to learn new skills, a willingness to persist, and a great deal of creativity.