Growing up as a young girl, Asterie Hitimana’s dream was to become a professional dancer and a fashion designer. Thanks to support from her family and relentless work, she is now living out and earning from her dream.

Being the eleventh child in a family of twelve children, life wasn’t that easy as their parents were almost overwhelmed.

Born in Burundi and raised in Rwanda, the twenty-nine-year old was inspired by her mum.

"I remember when I was a little girl my mother used to tell me that everybody has art. That everyone has something special which one only needs to discover and be passionate about,” she said.

Starting out

After high school in 2009, she followed her first dream which was to become a professional dancer.  She started dancing for different Rwandan’s Artists like Ms. Jojo, Meddy, King James and Danny among others.

 She also got an opportunity to be part of FESPAD in 2010 as one of youngest women judges in dancing competition. She also featured in Primus Guma Guma competition.

After spending a whole year dancing professionally, she joined University of Kigali to study accounting.  It’s at this point that Hitimana started looking for odd jobs with the aim of saving money to open her own enterprise.

According to her, she wanted to prove to Rwandans that they don’t have to purchase clothes from abroad, there are ways of making them unique and stylish too.

"I was doing three things at ago, dancing, working and at the same time studying, it wasn’t easy, but because I knew what I wanted, I managed to handle all of them,” she said.

In most instances she was working for boutique shops, because of the love she had with fashion and the money she will get, she made sure she saved Rwf 50,000 a month.

Moving forward

After graduating in 2014, she found that getting a job was not as easy. This was after applying for more than 200 jobs in vain.

This, she said, was depressing considering that accounting wasn’t what she wanted to pursue as a career.

The lack of a job and wrong career, pushed her to start doing what she thought was a passion.

Using her own savings and support from her family, in 2017, she started her own business called Twinkle by Asty; which designs and makes women’s attires from locally made materials, targeting   youth with middle average income.

"I decided to follow my passion, to do what I love and make a living out of it, this fulfilled my other dream (becoming a Designer and create my own brand), she said.

Challenges

"My first challenge was to define myself as brand, I knew I wanted to design clothes but didn’t know how and where to start from. Once I made decision of making clothes from scratch, the problem of convincing customers emerged,” she said.

Also, she said that considering since she started her business with little money, it was hard to catch up because of the high expenses required to acquire raw materials for the business.

Achievements, future plans

Since she started as an entrepreneur, she didn’t have experience but she has gained experience in the industry and now making Rwandan’s women look classy and at the same time says she is happy with what she is doing.

For now, she has three permanent staff and many others who work on a temporary basis, depending on the work she has at hand.

The average monthly income she said, after deducting all expenses, is between Rfw1, 000,000 and Rwf2,000,000 depending on the seasons.

"After doing my first clothing line, I managed to hire some people which increased the number of customers. Because of this, I am now working on getting a bigger shop and more employees,” she said.

"I think many young entrepreneurs get held back because they do not get support from those close to him. I believe if your family believes in you and they push you to accomplish what you desire, nothing is impossible” she said.

She added that with little income, if one is committed to what they want, fulfilling their dreams becomes possible.

"Work hard; surround yourself with people you trust, never give up because of challenges. Keep on pushing because at the end of the day, it is not about how you started but how you have finished,” she said.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw