Over the past six months Indego Africa has placed two large handicraft orders with Coovamaya, a weaving cooperative of roughly 200 women located in Mayange, Rwanda (an inspiring town supported by the Millennium Village Project). Their plateau baskets are beautifully made, and have undoubtedly added warmth to many of your homes. One of Indego Africa's goals for this trip to Rwanda is to complete the second part of our innovative model and return 100% of the profits from their sales to the women of Coovamaya.
But one of Indego Africa's main principles is that it should be the women -- not Indego Africa -- who decide how profits should be spent, and this past Wednesday we started the discussion. Would they like management training? Computer lessons? Capital improvements? After a fruitful discussion with Coovamaya's executive board, the women decided to start a microcredit fund, which will allow the cooperative to make small loans to its members with the goal of starting their own businesses. We will surely keep you updated on this exciting news!
The Indego Africa team also spent time getting to know the women and gathering information for the upcoming Coovamaya page on our website. While taking the women's photographs, I started to notice the incredible character of their hands. In the end I found that these images convey the remarkable spirit and stories of these women almost as much as -- or even more than -- their portraits. Indeed, these beautiful hands are what drive the success of Indego Africa. For a slideshow of the Hands of Indego Africa, please click HERE (for large versions) or see below.
- Ben
0 comments:
Post a Comment