Ten Thousand Villages News

Lynn Poole, founder and coordinator of fair trade artisan group Batsiranai Craft Project, has brought the mission of trade to Harare, Zimbabwe--and now the international community is recognizing her mission. In honor of her work with Batsiranai, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama awarded Poole the Wisdom in Action "Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award" on April 26 in San Francisco.

"Lynn's mission with Batsiranai struck a chord with the board, who choose a select few from among many nominees to receive the Unsung Heroes of Compassion each year," said Christine Wright, Event Coordinator for the Unsung Heroes of Compassion. "About 50 individuals from more than 13 different countries--all doing amazing, compassionate work--were chosen to be honored at this year's event."

"This event was a true example of the Ten Thousand Villages philosophy," said Alex Hartzler, Ten Thousand Villages board chair who attended the event. "Regardless of where someone lives, or what they are doing, people doing good things are a blessing to know and to be involved with." It was appropriate that Ten Thousand Villages was represented at the event, said Hartzler: "This shows what good work Lynn is doing in Zimbabwe with the mothers, and how Villages is allowing their good work to be a theme throughout our store network."

When asked about what drove her mission to establish Batsiranai as a successful job-creation program, Poole repeatedly refers to the human face of fair trade:
"I have become a witness to the positive effects fair trade has on the Harare community," said Poole. "I see the life come back into the eyes of the women and children who join the Batsiranai family."

"Batsiranai," which translates as "helping each other," supports mothers with severely disabled children by offering them an opportunity to create products utilizing their traditional skills, for a fair price.

"Often the families in the Batsiranai artisan group live under challenging circumstances and suffer from the stigma related to local beliefs regarding the origins of disabilities," said Poole. "The income generated from the Batsiranai project allows the mothers to work near their homes, supporting the needs of their families, and to be available to care for their disabled child."

In an effort to support the youngest victims of Zimbabwe's skyrocketing HIV infection rate, and to establish a means of continued economic support for Batsiranai's artisans, Poole developed and successfully marketed the Twin Doll Campaign.

"The concept is simple: Batsiranai artisans create two handmade dolls. One doll can be purchased at Ten Thousand Villages, and its "twin" is given to a child of a family affected by HIV in Zimbabwe," said Poole. "Many of the children who receive the dolls have never had a toy or doll in their lives."

Distribution of the "twin" for each doll purchased at Ten Thousand Villages occurs in one of a number of ways--some dolls are shared through organizations working with needy families affected by HIV in the greater Harare area.

Two weeks after the introduction of the Twin Doll in Ten Thousand Villages stores in 2008, the more than 800 dolls produced by Batsiranai artisans sold out of stock: "The Twin Doll has been an overwhelming success," said Melissa Hand, buyer for Ten Thousand Villages U.S. "It is a campaign that allows Ten Thousand Villages' customers to feel a direct and very personal connection to a child living under great hardship and suffering in a country under dictatorship.

"Batsiranai is an example of how a social entrepreneurial effort can become a model for women's empowerment," said Hand. "It is not based on sponsorship and donations, but on the hard work of 140 women."

Batsiranai artisans hope to expand their project to include more than 600 families who can help each other during enormously difficult times in Zimbabwe.

For artisans of Blue Mango, an artisan workshop based in Chennai in south India, their work is often more than a job. For artisans like Bothumani, it has been a lifeline.

Bothumani has been visually impaired since birth. After her parents died, a neighbor helped her; the woman worked in a kitchen, and she brought leftovers for Bothumani. Threatened by her brother, who wanted the family inheritance, Bothumani got scared and finally moved out. After her sister's husband died, Bothumani moved in with her, but her sister didn't feed her, and made her sleep outside. Another neighbor heard that Blue Mango provided noon meals, and took Bothumani there. "Until coming to Blue Mango, I often went hungry," She recalls. "Now I work hard and try to earn good money."

Blue Mango focuses on employment for marginalized women: widows, the abused, abandoned or physically or mentally disabled, and those affected by HIV/AIDS. Started by Tamar DeJong, a South African development specialist raised in Madagascar, Blue Mango focuses on training, employee ownership and empowerment, and its artisans produce silk and cotton bags, pillows, jewelry and ornaments. Blue Mango exports to Ten Thousand Villages through MESH, which works with many disabled artisans across India.

DeJong describes the workshop's goal of giving disabled women opportunity, and tells how Bothimani "found her niche" at Blue Mango: "Rajakumari [Blue Mango supervisor] didn't abandon our idea of giving disabled single women a chance, and asked Bothimani to help in our daycare. Bothimani is visually challenged, friendly and has a great attitude, but she wouldn't have struck me as the likely candidate to run after energetic kids.

"Within minutes, though, she had the children gathered around her playing the Tamil version of 'This Little Piggy Went to Market.' The laughter was contagious. Then she started singing them nursery rhymes. I passed by, quite intrigued, but she didn't see me. Later on she led the kids to the swing set and started pushing their happy little bodies into the sky. I was reminded of one of my favorite childhood poems:
'How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it's the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!'

"Bothimani has found her niche. I think that this is my favorite part of Blue Mango--being part of the process of enabling motivated women to find the place where they 'sing' within the program.

"Imagine yourself as a village woman who has gone up to 3rd grade, maybe even 10th grade. The school lessons are rote; creativity and individuality are not valued. The goal is to pass the standardized tests. In this area, a 'good woman' has the duty to produce an unimaginable dowry fee, get married, and give birth to sons. It is no wonder that most of our women don't know what they are good at.

"My goal for all of the women at Blue Mango is for them to be happy, and to be paid for doing what they love. As Blue Mango grows steadily and we direly need more women to fill positions of leadership and responsibility, I rarely hire from without. I know that within our women, there are hidden potentials just waiting to be discovered and nurtured."

As an artisan with the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) in Cairo, Egypt, Souma Falah and her colleagues know all about recycling.

Founded in 1984, APE started as an initiative to provide alternative employment for people involved in Cairo's informal garbage collection industry. In seven neighborhoods of the Moqattam section of Cairo, an estimated 83,000 garbage collectors work together to collect refuse from all parts of the city. They bring the garbage to their homes, separate it into different product categories and then sell it to brokers. The garbage is carefully sorted on the flat roofs of their homes to keep it off of the streets and out of their living quarters. The work is hard, exposes the workers to health hazards, and is not considered a respectable way to life. Child mortality is high; in contrast to a U.S. rate of 7 per 1,000, and an Egyptian rate of 33 per 1,000, the rate of child mortality in the garbage collectors' community is 117 per 1,000.

APE works within this community, providing training for young women to make a living through craft production. APE artisans create products from fabric remnants sourced from local textile mills, using hand looms to create a range of bags, rugs and the colorful, folk-art hassock introduced in June by Ten Thousand Villages. The group provides work for some 250 young women. Artisans receive three months training with pay, as well as health care and a daycare for their children. Some receive a loom that allows them to work from home.

While Moqattam residents deal with a large quantity of garbage, it is well organized in bags and kept on their roofs, off of the streets. Directly adjacent to Moqattam, residents have built a church high on the side of a mountain overlooking their neighborhood. "Providing the labor, carving talent and vision for the church, they have created a beautiful complex that stands in stark contrast to their daily lives," observed Joyce Burkholder, purchasing director, who visited the group in 2008.

Swine Flu Fears Raise Sectarian Tensions
Moqattam and other garbage collector communities in Cairo have large Christian minorities, although about 90% of the country as a whole is Muslim. Marginalized farmers in Upper Egypt, where there are large Christian communities, began moving to the city in the 1950s, where some could find no other work than collecting garbage. The garbage also provided food for the goats and pigs they raised. Muslims do not eat pork, but Christians do, and selling the pork to the larger Christian community became an important source of income along with collecting garbage.

Over the years, tensions have risen in rural and urban areas between Christians and Muslims over the presence of pigs; not only do Muslims shun pork, they see the animals as unclean, and feel they should not be allowed in what they view an Islamic country.

The recent spread of the H1N1 flu virus, also known as swine flu, has raised these existing tensions in Egypt. While declared unnecessary by the World Health Organization, the Egyptian government carried out a campaign to cull the pig population, some 300,000 animals, in the country. This has had a devastating impact on the garbage collector communities, where some 30 to 50 percent of people depend on the animals for much of their livelihood--through the sale and consumption of the meat, as well as on the pigs' function in eating much of the food waste that they process. Moqattam residents need to pay for disposal of such "non-recyclables," and thus this amount is now increased.

Many are also very upset about the method of killing the pigs. Rather than using humane methods, those responsible reportedly clubbed, stabbed and beat the animals, then bulldozed large numbers into the desert outside the city. Compensation is set at only 25 percent of the market value of the pigs.

Ten Thousand Villages' orders with APE are now more critical than ever, and the artisans express their gratitude for the ongoing support and purchase of their products.

From reports by Doug Lapp, Ten Thousand Villages buyer, and Linda Herr, Mennonite Central Committee Egypt country co-representative.

For artisan Pramila Shrestha, working at Sana Hastakala in Kathmandu, Nepal, is a vital opportunity to earn income to support her two children--a son, 6, and daughter, 1. Shrestha and her husband are both hearing impaired and unable to speak. Having trained her in sign language and sewing, The Deaf Society Forum recommended Shrestha to Sana Hastakala.

Pictured here, Shrestha is working on the allo tote recently introduced by Ten Thousand Villages. The outer fabric of the bag is handwoven "allo" cloth made from the fibers of the giant nettle plant. Harvested for generations in the Himalayan region of Nepal, the allo plant grows in the northern part of the country at altitudes of more than 1,200 meters. Artisans harvest the bark, boil it in water for two to three hours and then rinse it. Wet fibers are then coated with a clay soil for lubrication, which makes separation and spinning easier. They shake the dried bundles of allo to remove the soil, and then, spin the fibers using a lightweight hand spindle. All fibers are taken on most journeys, and spun even on the most difficult walks.

Sana Hastakala, which means "small handicraft" in Nepali, is a nongovernmental, nonprofit export organization based in Kathmandu. Sana Hastakala works to preserve the rich artistic skill and traditions of Nepali artisans, and provides additional training and marketing assistance to artisans. Eighty percent of the artisans are women and most are uneducated. Sana Hastakala strives to increase its export sales so that additional disadvantaged artisans can improve their economic and social conditions. Profit from sales is used for producer development programs, staff welfare and organizational strengthening.

Sana Hastakala was established in 1989 with the assistance of UNICEF, initially as a retail shop, becoming self-sufficient one year later. Its objective was to help market the handicrafts of producers, mainly women operating on a small scale, usually from their homes. Sana Hastakala has since expanded its connections with producers in rural areas, often working through international and local nongovernmental organizations. It became a full member of WFTO, the World Fair Trade Organization, in 2003. It is a founding member of Fair Trade Group Nepal (FTG), which started in 1993.

Ten Thousand Villages purchases ceramics, scarves, bags and other products from Sana Hastakala. Ten Thousand Villages has purchased products from Sana Hastakala since 2001.

A previously ignored and unremarkable fast-growing "weed" has now become a source of economic sustainability for rural women in Tanzania. With their high oil content, the seeds of Tanzania's jatropha plant have been discovered to be an ideal raw material for making high quality soap.

Livinius Manyanga, mechanical engineer and founder of KAMA Herbal Products Limited, a workshop of Kwanza Collection based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, spent four years from 2000 to 2004 researching oil-based seeds in Tanzania, and potential economic benefits. The hardy jatropha, which is both drought and pest resistant, was discovered to produce seeds with up to 40 percent oil content. "The oil has a very high saponification value," explained Manyanga, referring to the process of transforming fat into good quality soap.

Implementing the soap making project, Manyanga focused on rural groups, helping to train rural women on seed collection, oil pressing and soap production. These women entrepreneurs used the "Ram" oil pressed, developed earlier by Manyanga and his colleagues. The women gather mature, ripe seeds, then press and filter the oil. This wonderfully practical innovation is now being used in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe as well as in Tanzania.

"Rural women play a crucial role in the jatropha soap supply chain," explained Manyanga. "These are the women who are organized in rural areas to increase income and alleviate poverty through environmental conservation activities." These conservation activities include establishing tree nurseries and planting trees, as well as collecting and processing jatropha seeds as small business enterprises. Currently some 20 women are employed, earning on average $90-$100 dollars per month ($75 is the standard minimum wage in Tanzania).

The soap itself is made primarily with jatropha oil, with some coconut oil added to increase shelf life to approximately four years. The soap is hard milled, and has been found to be soothing to the skin. Jatropha soap has been approved by the Tanzanian and the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations.

Long prized for its medicinal qualities, jatropha has been used as an ingredient in folk remedies around the world--as a malaria treatment, and for soothing skin ailments. In addition, the hardy plant serves as a windbreak for animals, as live fencing and for biofuel for lamps and cook stoves. Jatropha plants also prevent soil erosion very well, and, when shed, their leaves become a soil-enriching mulch.

Dastkar Ranthambore, an artisan workshop located in rural Rajasthan, India, is an organization with a unique story. Twenty years ago, the Indian government dedicated a large area of land in Rajasthan, a region rich in natural resources, as a controlled tiger habitat. This action forced many villagers to relocate to the fringes of the land. This was a blow to the local population, as they were in some cases relocated far from sources of water and other life-sustaining resources.

In order to earn money, many of the village women were forced to begin illegally cutting wood to sell as fuel. The government enlisted Dastkar, a large NGO in Delhi, to complete a human survey of the area and identify alternative forms of employment. Dastkar began training women in embroidery and tailoring, skills that exist in other parts of Rajasthan but were no longer present in Ranthambore. Dastkar Ranthambore has since become an independent organization, and has developed a successful retail business catering largely to foreign tourists visiting the nature preserve. The group is now poised to achieve good success in the export market, and hopes to supplement artisans’ income during the “off-season” of the tourist market.

AIACA works with nonprofit and producer-owned artisan organizations in India. Some 65 member groups benefit from marketing support, design training and capacity building assistance. Artisans, who are paid on a per piece basis, participate in deciding pricing for products. In all cases, profits are either distributed among the artisans or reinvested in the community through other development programs. Artisans working with AIACA are primarily women.

Most of the artisan groups that are part of AIACA are made up of home-based artisans. In some cases, artisans gather in village community centers to work together. These centers are built with contributions from nongovernmental organizations, and are maintained by the community.

AIACA began in 2003 as an informal association of craft groups spread throughout India. It has now become a strong advocacy body for artisans, organizing groups into a common forum to determine what steps the craft sector needs to take to remain competitive in a changing economic scenario.

Ten Thousand Villages sells embroidered textiles made by the artisans of this AIACA workshop.

“I love every bit and piece of this work,” said Shyam Prajapati, an artisan with the Association for Craft Producers who is based in Thimi, Nepal. “I love the creative part … where I get to explore my creations through clay.”

In this traditional pottery community, some 80 percent of the population is involved with the craft. In most cases, potters work in family businesses. The clay used to make the pots is sourced locally. Though making pottery is traditionally regarded as men’s work, more than half of the potters working with ACP are women.

Shyam Prajapati comes from a long line of potters in Thimi. “I belong to the pottery making caste group,” he explained. “Pottery used to be our family business from generations to generations. … As a child, I had seen my family working and tried to help them in every possible way.” Prajapati’s father has since left the profession to work in masonry, as he could no longer support the family through pottery.

After completing 10th grade, Prajapati entered a nine-month ceramics training program. Upon graduation, he was offered a job with the Dan Krishna Prajapati workshop, where he has worked for the past five years. (Prajapati is a common name in Thimi, a designation of the potter community.) “Though I was hired for the finishing tasks, such as stamping patterns on the items, I started giving my hand in the whole process,” Prajapati explained. “I believe that by learning every piece of this work, I will be more skillful.”

By far the largest of Nepal's potter communities, Thimi consists of several thousand potter families, with some 8,000 individual members involved in some aspect of the craft. Wares of many types are produced in the community—pottery items used in everyday life throughout the Kathmandu Valley and beyond: architectural terra cotta, roof tiles, pottery space heaters, containers for water storage and for cooking, flower pots and many kinds of decorated, functional ware.

“Working with ACP has made a lot of difference in my life,” said Prajapati. Firstly, I am happy that I am lending my hand to my father and brother to support the family, by doing the work that I enjoy. Also, it has made me more skilled and confident in my work.”

Prajapati also values his interaction with fair trade buyers and others who express interest in his work. “I would also like to thank the buyers, due to whom I and my friends have been able to make a good earning, which is increasing day by day. More orders means more work, and more work means more earning and increasing skills every day.

“[This work] has given me recognition that the items I make are valued and demanded by people from the first world at a fair price, for which I equally feel honored. I am happy that I can resume my traditional work.”

And for Prajapati, this traditional role is where he sees his future. “I dream of establishing my own ceramic unit and giving employment to more people.”