Dian making a living in city

By Parker Tambua

Dian Kange, 46, from Maia village in the Pangia district of Southern Highlands runs a small business at a stall inside the Pacific Women Network Trade Centre in Waigani.
Dian is the youngest daughter in her family. She has older sisters and brothers who live in the village.
She managed to reach Grade 10 at the Pangia High School.
She came to Port Moresby more than 10 years ago to look for job and business opportunities.
She has twin sons who are at school. She lives with them and her husband at the Morata settlement in Port Moresby.
She has been selling meri blouses, shoes, sandals and other locally-made products for women for over a year now.
Her small business is one of the 40 small and medium-sized enterprises mostly run by women inside the center.
She started her business with a capital of K500 to buy materials for meri blouses.
“When I started this business, I struggled at times. It was a slow start. I made about K500 in a week which was not enough considering the rent I have to pay for the stall and also the need of my family.
“Despite the struggle I didn’t give up. I made sacrifices and faithfully paid my rent and kept selling my products.
“After five months, my sales picked up and I made about K1000 a week. That gave me confidence to continue up to now. At this stage I am making over K3000 a week and some time it goes over K4000 depending on the customers.”
Dian’s husband is between jobs. One of her sons is into first-year studies at the Divine Word University. The other is in high school.
She supports all of them from the money she earns from her small stall. She pays for her sons’ school fees and allowances. She also meets the needs of her husband and other cultural obligations such as haus krai contributions.
“I don’t have any qualifications to get a job. I live at the Morata settlement. Life is tough living in the city. But to compensate for that God has blessed me with the skills and knowledge of sewing and selling items.
“This business has been a success for me and now I am looking at expanding and selling my products on a much bigger scale. I’ve already arranged a place to rent with bigger space that will cater for large quantities of my products which are mainly PNG-made fashion blouses.”
She has not regretted leaving her Maia village to come down to Port Moresby and look for opportunities to earn a living and support herself.

She encourages other women to do something useful for themselves such as starting small businesses.
“My message to the uneducated mothers out there doing nothing is don’t be lazy. God has blessed us with skills and knowledge to sustain ourselves. Use that and get involved and do something like what I am doing.”