Know about Dyna
Dyna is one of the 20 women at risk of social exclusion who form part of the "Ellas lo Bordan" embroidery workshop. Together, they have created the ÅTERSTÄLL cushion collection that can be purchased at IKEA stores in Madrid. In the workshop she has found a new way of life, friendship and a job. She tells us her story…
Every day is a new challenge: if you didn’t get it right yesterday, you’ll try again tomorrow”
Dyna is clear about it: “Ellas lo Bordan came to me”. It was through the women’s shelter she was staying at. Steffy, a girl who was already in the project, told her what it was about. But it was the Director of Ellas lo Bordan who offered her an interview to join the workshop.
She happily began her training in early July, along with the entire team of seamstresses. A team that, for her, is the best bit of her work.
“When I’m with my workmates I am happy: we play jokes, we have fun, we take care of one another… This is a place that you love when you arrive in the morning. Coming here is wonderful”, she summarises with pride.
Every day, a new challenge
Before sunrise, Dyna gets up, showers, dresses the kids and makes them breakfast. She has no time to take her twins to nursery school, so a friend living in the shelter takes them along with her own kids. After travelling by bus, train and underground, she arrives at the workshop. ¡The start of a new working day!
Then Montse, her boss, plans the day and allocates tasks. They all take turns: pattern making, cutting, sewing and darning … “Every day is a new challenge. If you didn’t get it right yesterday, you’ll try again tomorrow, and do it better every day.”.
The girls look for ways to simplify their work, learning the tricks that each one keeps up her sleeve. This is how they keep on learning.
“¡Mummy made this cushion!”
Dyna feels immensely proud that her cushions and those of her workmates will be sold in IKEA. “I went to IKEA for the first time a short while ago with one of our bosses, ¡I loved it! I looked at everything with wonder… ¡Look at that! ¡And that! ¡They make so many things!”, she says, delighted.
Her children are still very young, but a while back Dyna took home a cushion and they both kept saying: “¡Mummy made it, mummy made it!”.
In the past, which Dyna has now left behind, many bad things happened and she had trouble trusting people. “I now known that this is real, they are helping me with everything (my documentation, my residence permit…) and now I have regained my trust in people. This is what makes me the happiest. Feeling secure”, she says.
This courageous woman is sure that it is all about setting goals and how far she is willing to fight for them.