Asia Summit: Entrepreneurs in Handcrafts Highlights
From September 14-17, 2010, Vital Voices Global Partnership hosted the Vital Voices of Asia: Women's Leadership and Training Summit in New Delhi, India to recognize the critical role that women can and must play in moving the region forward socially, politically and economically. The Summit brought together women leaders from throughout the region and shone a spotlight on the advancements made over the past decade, while building and strengthening a powerful network across sectors, cultures and generations.
As part of the Summit, the Entrepreneurs in Handcrafts program held a 3 day training workshop where we had 15 women participants from India, Nepal and the Philippines who had the opportunity not only to attend our Handcraft-specific workshop but also to exhibit and sell their product at a marketplace set up for the Summit.
Most of the participants lead community-based groups working with a majority of women artisans. We were delighted to have representation from 2 very large organisations based in India: Heena Parick and Mumtaz Baloch from the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) who work with over 30,000 women in the handcraft sector in India and Kavita Chaudhary from Jaipur Rugs who work with 40,000 artisans in India who make the most beautiful hand-woven rugs.
The participant list also included Sharmila Wood, who attended as a rapporteur and brought with her a wealth of knowledge about product design. Devika Krishnan, another participant, also contributed a great deal of knowledge about product design, as did Pacita Juan, who was a panel speaker in a number of the Economic Track plenary sessions and requested to join a number of our sessions. Pacita owns a handcraft retail store in the Philippines and contributed to the conversation from a retail buyer point of view.
The participants produced a variety of innovative and beautiful products ranging from jewelry to handbags and home décor and accessories.
The Marketplace
For the duration of the Summit, a Handcraft Marketplace was set up with booths which provided the participants with the opportunity to:
- Showcase their products
- Make sales of products to the other Summit attendees
It was a tremendous success and a number of the participants confirmed that they had made excellent contacts for future business opportunities.
At the end of the Summit, Senior Director of the Entrepreneurs in Handcrafts Program Zoe Dean-Smith traveled to Jaipur. During that trip, she was invited to visit Kavita Chaudhary of Jaipur Rugs (Pty) Ltd. As mentioned above, Kavita had been a participant in the Handcraft track at the Summit. 27-year old Kavita works in her father’s rug-weaving business as the Director of Design & Development and the business employs approximately 40,000 weavers all over India. The majority of the weavers are home-based and the workshop in Jaipur houses the product development, customer order, marketing & sales, finance and export logistics teams. Under Mr. Chaudhary’s guidance, this business is flourishing and has recently created a non-profit social upliftment program for the artisans and their families. Part of the broader vision for the business is to start working with carpet weavers in Afghanistan who currently have no means of exporting their superior quality rugs out of their own country. This business is a wonderful role model of true Social Enterprise.
We would like to thank the Eranda Foundation for their invaluable support of this program at the Summit, which is making a meaningful contribution to the dignity and earning capabilities of many thousands of Indian and Nepalese artisans.
Feedback from SEWA
“Warm Greetings from SEWA! It was a great learning experience for both my colleague Mumtazben and me to be a part of the training workshop group of “Handcraft & Design” at Vital Voices - Asia Summit 2010. The training will help us in our day to day operations in the production supply chain. The costing and pricing exercise and market linkage reaching the international market was the best thing that happened during the training as the mock play that was done helped us understand very clearly how and where we can curtail the chain and how we can reach the buyers directly."
- Heena SEWA TFC
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