The last born of seven siblings, Lavis Namubiru Amooti is proud of the bock she has added onto the lives of her fellow young girls whom she empowers.
Born 23 years ago, to late William Kijjambu and Miriam Namata from Wakiso district, Namubiru graduated in social sciences and majored in health psychology from Kyambogo University.
In 2014, she was working as a maid and home caretaker and during this time, she learnt from her boss, how to bake cakes.
“I had never undertaken any baking lessons but I kept on learning from my boss and developed my own recipes as I kept on adding and reducing ingredients to suit what I wanted,” Namubiru says.
She says she kept on teaching herself and could use home utensils like cooking pans and cooking stove for trying out her skills and later.
The young girl would later use part of her meagre salary to pay in installment for the items she wanted and it took her a year to complete payment.
“When I joined university, I continued baking in the hostel,” she says.
Trains girls
At university, Namubiru says that at university, she took it upon herself to train fellow girls into self-sustainable but also employment skills.
She says the idea of training fellow girls came out of her experience.
“As a young lady, I needed money to pay for my school fees, a sustainable and constant source of income which at some point I had none. This made me realise and know there are many girls in the same state as me. I had to do something to change this state of affairs,”Namubiru says.
The 23 year old explains that she started off with training her friends in baking and before she knew it, everything had expanded as many other girls came through recommendation from those who saw her work as well as those she had trained.
“After a while, I started making schedules for cake baking. I later started making announcements on my social media and many showed interest in the training.”
Namubiru says she currently has two schedules including one where she visits the individuals at their respective homes for individual training.
“For group training we allocate one convenient home or venue and train them to bake using the home and locally available materials. The girls pay some money which I use to cater for material and equipment used during the training. After three months, the girls are ready to go on their own but the equipment and materials bought are given to them as startup capital.”
She insists that during her training, her emphasis is on self- employment and self-sustaining skills to fellow girls.
Namubiru has since started Lavis Cakes, a baking house for specifically cakes that she sells to earn money.
“This kind of work has boosted my network but linking my projects to community and enhanced trust. It has increased my own personal growth and development but also the students have become my friends and business partners,”Namubiru says.
She says she proud that in a short period, she has been able to train over 480 girls, majority of them from Northern Uganda.
“I am proud of many of the youths but specifically those that have put the skills attained to work by starting their own businesses and also giving back to fellow youths.”
Namubiru says her plan is to start a Lavis Cake Arena, a training centre that will focus on empowerment of and enabling of girls to learn skills that will enable them transform their own lives, communities and the country at large.
“My advice to youths is that our generation is very lucky. We should not get stuck between getting good grades and scrolling throughout social media. Let us learn beyond the classroom because opportunities come beyond anything we have ever known,” Namubiru advises.
