Mary Onduru

Mary is one of our best designers because of her amazing ideas. She is a very caring woman who not only takes care of her own five children (22, 19, 17, 13 and 11 years old) but also raises three other ones by herself. Her children motivate her and encourage her to keep going in life. Two of her sons even help her in rolling the paper for the beads so she can make the designs.

Mary is a single mom, her first husband died and she divorced her second husband. Since her parents were internally displaced from North to East Uganda, she never attended school and only speaks Swahili and Lugbara. Because there was no future for her in the village she moved to Kampala, where she started making jewellery out of paper.
Her beautiful designs soon became very popular, but she needed to earn more money to buy materials and to further develop her artistic skills. So she also started digging stones, which she broke in pieces to sell. That job caused her painful wrists to swell up making it difficult for her to keep producing the paper beads for her jewellery designs.

Fortunately her 22 year old son stepped in, he helps Mary making the paper beads which she designs, even her blind 19 year old son helps her in rolling them! With their help she can continue in making wonderful jewellery.
Mary is very proud to make jewellery for 22STARS and is happy that so many people love her work. She is grateful for our help and says that even though people from Europe look different from Uganda people, God connected us. In the end we all live under the same stars and are one family.