Mission
To provide supplemental income and marketable skills to artisans in Austin’s refugee community.
What We Believe
Refugee families have the courage to create successful new lives in the United States. We honor their perseverance and strength. We believe they deserve the opportunity to use their traditional artistic techniques to stay connected to their home cultures and achieve self-sufficiency in their new country.
What We Do
We help artisans in Austin’s refugee community:
- Earn income through the sale of beautiful handcrafted products
- Establish new lives by teaching them ESL and other employable skills
- Create new community in the U.S. while remembering the communities from which they came
The Model
We pattern much of what we do after fair trade principles. This includes:
- Direct Trade: By delivering products directly from artisan to buyer, we’re able to leave out the middle men. The proceeds from sales (70% of the purchase price) goes directly to the artisans, with a small percentage set aside to cover supplies and overhead costs. In traditional trading, less than 3-4% of the purchase price of an item returns to the factory owners and assembly line workers who make it.
- Safe working conditions: Our artisans work from the comfort and security of their own homes and at the convenience of their own schedule. By providing an opportunity for artisans to work from their homes, we are enabling them to earn income while maintaining their role as primary caregiver for their children and/or elderly parents.
- Transparency in pricing: Our artisans are included throughout the design, production and sales process and have the final say when it comes to setting fair prices for their work.
- Cultural protection: In their home villages, many of the women were weavers. Here, the women who know how to weave are now the carriers of a dying art form. Their work is no longer common, it is a priceless reminder of who they are. Most importantly, the children of our artisans see their mothers weaving and sewing in their homes, just as their grandmothers and great-grandmothers did before them. We are committed to celebrating their culture and artistry to help them support their families.
- Community improvements: We offer tailored educational instruction to prepare refugee artisans for employment and citizenship in the United States. From riding the bus to setting up a doctor’s appointment to preparing for a job interview, we work with them to learn practical skills to help them navigate their lives. Our more advanced English-speakers are learning to use the internet, sell their own products, and follow trends to make their products more marketable.
We’re often asked if we’ve ever considered other business models–microloans, women’s cooperative, or for-profit social entrepreneurship. While we’re huge advocates for these systems, and have seen their successes in projects throughout the world, we had to adjust and adapt many of the best practices of economic development to fit the unique challenges of working with this group.
Some of the more successful international models are based on the idea of empowering people to work within their own cultures to start businesses. Refugees starting a new life in the States are in a much more complicated situation. They’re trying to learn a new culture, a new language, and a new life in just a few months. That’s why educational development is such a crucial part of what we do. They have to learn basic survival skills before they can learn savvy business techniques.
As a result of countless hours listening to the artisans and researching and studying on our own, we’ve developed a system that we believe will help them move, slowly but surely, to greater self-sufficiency, success and happiness in their new homes in the United States.
