With a cleaning business and a new nonprofit, Lilian Okech strives to help female refugees
Lilian Okech had two realizations the night she landed in the Polk County Jail.
First, she finally needed to leave her husband. Second, she wanted to take her experiences and struggles as a refugee living in the United States and become a mentor for women and immigrants.
Okech, who came to the U.S. with her family from Uganda in 2005, became pregnant with her first son two years after settling in Idaho. At 16, her family forced her out of the house and into an arranged marriage with the father of her child, a union blessed by a community elder but not the state. Okech gave birth to three more boys and moved to Utah, and then Iowa. A decade of what Okech described to the Des Moines Register as an abusive relationship with her then-husband came to a head in 2017, when a fight broke out between the couple in their home. After her husband broke her phone, Okech said he called the police and accused her of trying to kill him.
Okech spent 36 hours (and 41 seconds) in jail, she said, and was later slapped with a restraining order. The experience was a wake-up call to move out of the house with her four sons and finalize the divorce. It also was the catalyst for starting her own business, Cleaning for Hope, a Des Moines-based commercial cleaning service that hires and supports refugee families.
Now 33 and nearly five years into her business, Okech is a speaker, an author and a homeowner and is working toward a life coach certification.
She was chosen as one of the Des Moines Register's People to Watch in 2023 for her work with refugee families at Cleaning for Hope and for her new venture, the nonprofit Hope to Shine, a network of support for new U.S. arrivals.
Iowa has welcomed more than 4,000 refugees since 2010. Okech and Hope to Shine co-founder Caryn Kelly said the nonprofit's focus will be to help female immigrants and refugees acclimate to the United States and to offer job training and mentorship opportunities.
Okech also will publish her books, "The Spirit of Warriors" and "Ageno," on April 1.
"I really want to rise up for the community to see me as their advocate or leader," she said.
Erin Jones, a former administrative assistant for the company, said Okech is an empowering force for women and all new arrivals.
"She is going to be the face that makes changes in how people see and treat our immigrant population," Jones said.
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Growing up in a refugee camp, suffering health issues
Okech was born in a refugee camp in Kitgum, Uganda, only months after her family escaped South Sudan in 1989 during a long civil war.
New arrivals lacked clean water and adequate nutrition for the first few years, though living conditions improved when the Ugandan government allowed immigrants to own their own land. Families were able to plant their own food, and organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees built wells to provide drinking water for communities.
Okech recalls constantly suffering from health issues as a child that carried into adulthood, which she later learned were in part lingering effects of catching Fifth’s Disease, a skin rash caused by parvovirus B19. Her health issues kept her from starting school until she turned 11 and made it difficult to make friends with children her age.
“But when people ask me how was life, for us, the life was great because that’s the only thing we knew,” she said.
The first time Okech used a phone was in 2000, when her sister called to persuade the family to join her in the United States. Her sister had moved to the U.S. the year before to join her husband in Idaho.
"She called and said, 'I'll bring you guys to America. In America, here, you go to school and we have juice inside the refrigerator and you don't ever have to go hungry again,'" Okech said. "My imagination went wild: 'OK, this America is a place where people walk on gold.'"
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Confident female caseworker in US becomes source of inspiration
Her sister helped Okech's family begin filling out paperwork through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a process for admission into the United States. They were supposed to come in 2001, but their plans were delayed after the 9/11 terror attack. It took another four years for the family to fly from Uganda to New York City.
She vividly remembers the caseworker who welcomed her family at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The woman, with long black hair and dark skin, would be a source of inspiration for Okech and helped her develop a sense of purpose.
"She looked so confident and as a 15-year-old, I had never seen a woman in a suit, and I never see a woman walking with such confidence," Okech said. "And right there, I (told) myself, 'One day I want to be like her.'"
Okech would hang on to the woman's image amid obstacles in pursuing what she calls the American dream. She hung onto it as the only Black student in her high school classes. And she would later conjure the woman's image during her divorce and the hardship of living with her four sons for three months in her mother's two-bedroom apartment before finding a place of her own.
"Even though I was in abusive relationship, I recalled back to that woman. The way she was dressed, the confidence she had, and all the other women I saw at the J.F. Kennedy airport. It didn't matter how life was going with me. I always knew that if I for some reason worked hard enough ... I'll make it," she said.
'Lily can make anything seem possible,' colleague says
Okech said she had wanted to leave the father of her children for a long time, but she thought that without a higher education, her options were limited. After a stint at Walmart, Okech began cleaning her church, the Des Moines Seventh-day Adventist Church.
People took notice of Okech's work and asked her to clean their homes or businesses. Within a year, Okech gathered more clients than she could handle. But what began as a side hustle to earn extra cash became her lifeline. It also became the first step in fulfilling her mission to help women and families on a similar path.
"When I moved out, I don't have any furniture or any clothes. So why not start a business where we can help other women who are going through a similar situation that I was?" Okech said.
Today, Cleaning for Hope has five employees, including immigrants and refugees from South Sudan and Cuba. Beyond paying for cleaning services, clients also donate clothes, cookware and other household items that the company takes to families in need.
Okech convinced Jones to work as Cleaning for Hope's administrative assistant starting in May 2020. Jones worked full time doing estimates for new customers, running schedules, managing accounting and creating brochures until she left for another work opportunity in October. Jones said it was Okech's vision that drew her in.
"Lily can make anything seem possible," Jones said. "Once people meet her, you can see how much passion she has for lifting others up and for helping people. She supports people and sees potential in people that they don't necessarily see."
Through her business, Okech said she also mentors her staff, teaching them about self-awareness, goal setting and finding passion and purpose.
Kelly, who co-founded the nonprofit Hope to Shine with Okech and also owns Shine Housekeeping, a Des Moines-based residential cleaning service, is white and was born in the U.S. She met Okech in 2016, at a time when she also was going through a divorce and looking for ways to support her children.
"What was striking to me was although we look very different and had very different backgrounds, we both arrived at this very similar point in life recognizing that we needed to build our own selves up as leaders to take care of our kids and interact in our communities and feel empowered," Kelly said.
Okech and Kelly joined forces to work on the nonprofit because they share a passion for helping English language learners and recent U.S. arrivals.
"Lily is the model for other women who find themselves in those challenging situations" such as divorce and financial instability, Kelly said. "And I've been there, lots of folks have been there. But what we need is to recognize that it doesn't matter where you come from or what you look like, but we just all end up needing each other in a way. And I think that's what I love about Lily."
Okech and Kelly want to build on those ideas with Hope to Shine by empowering immigrant women and families as leaders in their homes, workplaces and communities. Kelly said the organization will help fill in gaps for women and families in a state where many services for new arrivals seem scarce, disconnected, or geared toward men.
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The organization will offer assistance in accomplishing practical things such as learning how to drive, learning English, establishing bank accounts and connecting with other community members. It will also offer work training and experience through Shine Housekeeping and Cleaning for Hope.
Despite her struggles, Okech says she has remained steadfast in her vision.
"I think my 11-year-old self, she would say, 'I knew you were going to make it.' My 15-year-old (self) would say, 'Did you really have to go through all that to make it in life?' My 18-year-old (self) would say, 'I wish I had somebody to guide me before you go through all that,'" Okech said.
"And that is the beauty of Hope to Shine. I want to be that (for) young women."
Virginia Barreda is the Des Moines city government reporter for the Register. She can be reached at vbarreda@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @vbarreda2.
About Lillian Okech
AGE: 33
LIVES: Des Moines
EDUCATION: High School diploma from Horizonte Instruction and Training Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, 2011. Speaker training from Les Brown Enterprises, Human rights certificate training from US Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights.
CAREER: Entrepreneur. Founder of Cleaning for Hope. Co-founder of Hope to Shine. Inspirational speaker. Author.
FAMILY: Four sons, mother and two sisters in Iowa
About the Des Moines Register's 2023 People to Watch
It is a Des Moines Register tradition to close out each year and open the next by introducing readers to 15 People to Watch — individuals expected to make an impact on Iowa in the coming year.
This year's nominations from readers and our journalists totaled nearly 50 people and posed hard decisions for staff members charged with winnowing them to just 15.
The final 15 include people in business and the arts, athletes, those who work to support farmers and refugees, those who are the first new elected officials to their seats in decades, and people educating new generations. We hope that you are as inspired by reading about them as we were in profiling them.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Lilian Okech strives to help female refugees succeed in Iowa, US
