Woman gives jobs link business a motherly touch

Ms Salome Awino, managing director of Studio Twenty Two. Her agency offers various employment and career opportunities for young graduates and professionals to link up with employers. Photo/Diana Ngila 

By Neville Otuki

In Summary

• A mother of four, Ms Salome Awino treats her clients, most of whom are young and fresh from college, just as she would her children.
• Her recruitment agency, Studio Twenty Two Agencies (Abela), focuses on youth empowerment and not financial gains. That is something that sets Abela apart, she says.

Salome Awino’s entrepreneurial journey dates back to the 1980s when as a 21-year-old, she opened and ran a boutique and tailoring shop.

She was already a mother and a wife, having conceived at 15 while in Form Two and married the father of her child three years later.

Fast forward. Mama (mom) Abela, as she is commonly known to her clients, has steadily built a business empire that includes a beauty shop, tailoring and a road construction company. Ms Awino, 49, says her business is worth over Sh10 million. But that is not the highlight.

“My main business is worth thousands of job opportunities,” she tells the Business Daily, smiling. Ms Awino is the managing director and founder of Studio Twenty Two Agencies (Abela), a recruitment company based in Nairobi’s central business district.

A mother of four, she treats her clients, most of whom are young and fresh from college, just as she would her children.

“That is how I got the name mama Abela,” she says enthusiastically. Her three children have since left the roost, having completed university and started their own life while the fourth is at the United States International University (USIU).

She points out that her scope is all inclusive saying that besides college graduates, she has helped over 100 masters holders secure employment.

Asked about the worth of her recruitment agency, she hesitates before giving an answer. Abela, she says, focuses on youth empowerment and not financial gains. Tracing the maze of her life’s path to her office at Uganda House perhaps would help one understand why Ms Awino is keen to help the unemployed.

Her maiden job was at Cooper Motors Corporation (CMC) where she worked as a secretary. She says back then, landing a job was much easier as long one had some formal education. Things are tough nowadays, she says.

But not one to rest on her laurels, the go-getting spirit in her beckoned. She opened a salon, the first in Ngong in 1987, from her savings. The business was a roaring success, but not without challenges. Back then, beauty shops were associated with women with loose morals. 

But she was undeterred, although this venture briefly shook her marriage.

“It was a difficult time,” she reminisced.

Meanwhile, she had enrolled for an administrative course at the Kenya Institute of management. This saw her rise as an administrator in the Human Resource Department.

In 1994 Ms Awino took a leap of faith and applied for a Sh150, 000 loan from a sacco which she used to venture into fabrics business. She would travel to Namanga at the border of Kenya and Tanzania where she bought authentic African cloths like vitenge and lessos to sell in Nairobi.

“The money was good, and by now my husband had accepted my salon business,” she reflects, her eyes clouding with the seemingly painful memorise.