Freeset

Today we spent the morning with the directors of Freeset, a family from New Zealand who relocated to Kolkata about 10 years ago. Once they moved into their flat, they realized that they had moved into a very large red-light district. Around 10,000 women are involved in the trade within a 1 km square, serving an estimated 20,000 customers every day.

Freeset grew out of relationships the directors began developing with the women soon after their arrival here. They discovered a need for an alternative form of employment, and began to teach women to sew bags from jute, a local plant fiber. From its small beginnings Freeset has grown to its present capacity, employing 140 former sex workers. There's a nursery for their kids. They set up retirement savings funds for each worker. They provide health benefits. And they're a member of the Fair Trade Federation, so fair wages and working conditions are of course part of the picture.

Our hearts were truly moved to see the workers in action. Many say that work is a safer place than home. Most of them are high-spirited and outgoing, and their lives have really been transformed - a far cry from the bondage, terror, exploitation, and poverty that used to define their existence.

Freeset is bursting at the seams and is trying to acquire a larger working space. Their ultimate vision is to transform the entire neighborhood. When we asked how we as retailers can help them reach their goals, their response was to sell lots of bags! So hurry up and mosey on down to the shop - we've got several left in the window. The more we sell, the more we order, and the more Freeset is able to grow.

Sari Bari

Wednesday we had a wonderful, hope-filled visit with the ladies of Sari Bari.

Sari Bari is an organization that offers women who want to leave the sex trade an option for alternative employment. They teach them to sew recycled saris into blankets and bags (a sari is a long scarf-like garment worn by almost every woman in India). They teach them about saving money. They offer health benefits. Through their business, they are witnessing the lives of women who come from childhoods shattered by terror, exploitation, and poverty become transformed by dignity and hope.

We were able to stroll through their small workshop and see the workers stretching their projects over the floor in clean, well-lit, ventilated rooms, cutting, measuring, and stitching while enjoying each other's company. We sat in the office with one of their staff, an American, and had a great conversation about how the business got started, how it grew, and how it works. After that we met another American staffer for dinner and shared our hearts for the kind of work we're all involved in - although we have the easy job as the retailers!

Arrival in Kolkata

We arrived in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) after a fast-paced 2 days in Delhi, not knowing what to expect. While this is Jency's second trip to India, it's the first time to Kolkata for us both. The city has quite a reputation on all sorts of fronts. Politically, it's located in a communist state (West Bengal) of India. Socially, it's got some of the most squalid conditions in the country, as well as some of the most luxurious. Spiritually, you'll see sidewalk merchants performing rites of blessing over their merchandise at the beginning of the day, Westerners wandering the various temples and holy places in search of truth or enlightenment, as well as other foreigners who are here to represent their own religions. So we were a little curious to see what it would be like.

The hourlong taxi ride from the airport to our hostel was unforgettable. Kolkata is nothing like Delhi. First of all, the heat is unreal. Granted, we came during the hottest part of the year, but it must be 110 degrees in the shade. The roads are a crowded mass of cars, bicycles, rickshaws, buses, trucks, motorcycles, cows, dogs, pedestrians, and more, all jostling for position, getting in each other's way, and honking their horns incessantly.

The scenery along the road is overwhelming in its complexity and contrast. Street dwellers bathing under sidewalk water spouts. Hawkers calling, calling, calling for your attention. Decrepit colonial-era buildings plastered in advertisements, signs, and political murals, dripping with dust and smog, and slowly eroding from climate-related decay. The random business man with tie and briefcase wading his way among the miniature slums where people's homes consist of the garbage they were able to pile up and carve a hole into on the bank of a tepid pond. A flashy retail strip. Four people crammed into a sidewalk stall selling fruit, bottled drinks, and candy -- one minding the cash, another squatting beneath the table peeling fruit, one calling to passers-by, and the fourth sleeping in the corner, weary from the oppressive heat.

We walked into our hotel room, cranked up the A/C, and had a few moments of wide-eyed blinking. How on earth are we going to get around? None of the streets appear to be marked. What's our plan going to be when it comes to the beggars? Single mothers send their half-naked children to plead for spare change, a man with no arms lies prostrate on a tarp chanting alms, and an elderly polio sufferer rattles her empty plate - all within a block's walk. It's almost too much to process all at once.

We order some fried rice from the hotel kitchen, wash up, and eat. We ask God for wisdom and endurance. We go to bed under the blessed A/C.

Delhi Pictures

A couple shots from our visits in Delhi.

1) Us standing with Rashmi of SETU, the Indian arm of Handmade Expressions. We're at the IIMREN production facility, standing next to the woman who weaves the fabric on the bags mentioned in the previous post.


2) Nasir, an artisan we met from Rajasthan who made some bangles before our very eyes that will appear on our shelves once we're back in the US. They're made from wax and clay, heated over wood coals and shaped with hand tools.


3) A student at the Amar Jyoti Charitable Trust, where physically and mentally handicapped children are taught to integrate into normal society and given vocational training. Here she's making some bangles under the direction of the facility's master jeweler. We've got some jewelry from the Amar Jyoti school that we're bringing back.
4) This is Jency selecting jewelry to purchase from Amar Jyoti's master jeweler.

We're now in Kolkata and have already had an incredible meeting with the people at Sari Bari. We'll write a more extensive update when we've got more energy. The heat here is unreal!

Freedom

"Fair trade offers a framework in which to exercise freedom as a consumer and as a human being."

--Jacqueline DeCarlo, in her book, Fair Trade

Delhi, India Day 1 and 2

Hello from Delhi, India!

After a long 18 hours of travel, we arrived in Delhi on Saturday night (Delhi time is 9.5 hours ahead of Chattanooga), checked into the YWCA Guesthouse, and hit the ground running Sunday morning. We are so glad to be here and are learning a lot about bargaining for EVERYTHING.

Sunday morning we met Rashmi who is in charge of the India side of Handmade Expressions. We also met Lina, who is the director of IIMREN, a weaving and sewing group that HE buys from. They offer fair wages and good work hours to their workers and are producing beautiful rugs, tablecloths, placemats, bed covers, etc. One of the weavers we met was weaving a pattern that we are very familiar with. You can find it here on our website. Through translation, we were able to tell her that we sell the bags she weaves at our store- it was so fun!! We definitely appreciate even more the quality of their work after seeing how much goes into the product. We were told that when someone comes up with a design, they do not draw it or write it down- they keep it in their heads and are able to remember what they are doing as they weave. We took some great pictures that we will try to get posted soon.

Today we visited the Amar Jyoti School for Disabled Children. HE buys paper bags from them. It is a pretty amazing facility where free health services are offered including physical therapy, surgeries, social work, etc. The school is for mentally and physically handicapped children, and then when the children are youth age, they begin to give them vocational training so that the children can function in society on their own. Their goal is to be self-sufficient. Dr. Tuli, the director of the center, is a very busy lady with many things going on- all the health care services, school, vocational training, etc. We were very impressed with how much she has accomplished. The center employs 36 doctors that perform operations for polio, create prosthetics, and administer medications. They have a large class building, and at least 5 vocational training centers that we counted.

We've really appreciated the conversations we've had so far. Rashmi was able to give us a brief outline of how a fair trade cooperative is started, nurtured, and developed. Here are the steps:

1) Identify a group of artisans with lots of potential

2) Engage in a relationship with them in order to build trust and confidence. This usually takes place through lots of small projects over a long period.

3) Begin offering product development advice - how to tailor their skills to produce marketable goods. This involves lots of creating samples and back-and-forth dialog, usually for about 3-4 months.

4) Along the way literacy and computer training is necessary in order to make sure that artisans can communicate properly once their business grows. Most of the time artisans live in rural areas with little to no access to this kind of education. Much of their craft remains orally taught.

5) Begin selling the products and constantly look for ways to improve, such as cost optimization, efficiency, consistency, and quality control.

From what we gathered from our conversation with Lina and Rashmi, the main obstacles to the success of their fair trade cooperatives is mistreatment by domestic buyers, as well as a lack of resources to accomplish what many larger, more powerful companies consider commonplace: market research and effective branding.

So, quite an educational first two days in India. It's time to sign off for now, since we've got a 7AM flight to Kolkata tomorrow.

More to come. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the Blogoshpere

Hi. I'm Beth--the new girl on the block here at World Next Door. While Nathan and Jency are out of the country for much of the next month, I will be (hopefully) holding things together here at the store, filling web orders, running remote events, and figuring out more about the fair trade world.

I am so excited to have this opportunity to work at World Next Door. As Nathan mentioned earlier on this blog, I lived overseas (in China) for a few years, and grew to love the beauty of cultures, languages, and people who live and think differently than we do here in the States. I am looking forward to continuing to learn more about the "global underdogs" we work with and for here through fair trade.

Although I admit I have a tendency to grow obsessive about stalking others' blogs, this is my first venture into the blogging world. I would love to hear any thoughts/suggestions on topics you, the readers, might like to hear more about. What, in the great world of fair trade, are you curious about?

Please post your comments, and check back here often. Nathan and Jency leave tomorrow: this blog will be Grand Central Station when it comes to stories of their travels, adventures, and exciting new relationships with vendors in India and Nepal. I can't wait to hear about what they've been up to!

"It's All About the Green" at Cleveland State

We went up to Cleveland on Saturday to hawk our wares at their "It's All About the Green" event, which showcased environmental efforts of all kinds. Our friend Jennifer Jack was also there.

Here are some highlights...


There was a bluebird house right next to our tent, and the parent kept bringing worms and grubs to the young...



Ethanol made from kudzu - cool! They were using it to power an old VW engine.

Freeset Bags now online

Now to bring the makeshift photo studio back to relevance, come check out all the new stuff we've put up on our online store! Lots of it is stuff that we haven't had good pictures for, which all changed yesterday with my posterboard and CFLs.

First up, we've got our current stock of Freeset Bags up. These bags are made by women who have been brought out of a life of forced prostitution in Kolkata, India. They are now able to work decent hours for decent pay, learn to read and write, and daycare is provided for their children. With each purchase of a Freeset Bag, you are joining in their story of freedom. All Freeset bags are made from jute, a renewable resource. They also happen to kick massive amounts of booty, and one is sure to find its way to your shoulder in the very near future!

Also, the "New" category is bursting at the seams with loads of new (or not-necessarily-new-to-the-store-but-new-to-the-web) stuff!

Check it out, and if you get our newsletter, don't forget to use your discount code.

Makeshift Photo Booth

Most of you will wonder why I'm posting this, but lately I've become a bit of a photography geek so I'm excited about what I just did this afternoon.

I needed to get some better pictures of some of our products to use on our website and in advertisements, after getting frustrated by the poor lighting for product photography at our shop. So I went to Walgreen's and picked up a piece of posterboard ($0.89) and a 2-pack of CFL light bulbs ($5.99) and slapped together a very amateur photo studio.

We have some clamp-on lights that we use in our tent at events, so I stuck the CFLs in those and used random junk we had lying around the warehouse to rig up some mounts. The clamp-on lights already had good bulbs in them, but the whole reason I used the CFLs is because they had their color temperature stamped on the packaging. Knowing the bulbs' color temperature really helped me narrow down the settings on my camera to get the proper white balance, which is key to accurate color in your digital pictures.

I had to put some objects around the posterboard in order to block some of the nasty blue light coming in from the window. I can't wait to try this out at night when there's less interference from ambient light.

Welcome to the WND Team!

Dear WND blog readers,

I'd like to introduce you to our new assisstant manager Beth Gregory. Beth and her husband Michael have traveled and lived overseas and hope to again one day. She has a background in journalism and will be doing a lot of the blogging, writing press releases, etc. Beth has a heart for other cultures and the world, and we are excited to have her on board as our little business grows. Please come see her at the store and say hi!

Our hope for the blog is that it will become a place to learn about things happening around the world- whether things having to do about fair trade or global issues in general. And as always, we'll continue to give updates about what we're doing at World Next Door. Beth will be doing a lot of the research and writing for this.

Welcome to the team Beth! We're excited you've joined us!

P.S. Check back soon for updates on our trip to India and Nepal. Since Nathan and I will be in big cities most of the time, we're hoping to be able to post pictures and give updates about what we've been doing. We leave April 24!

They're organic!

We planted some new flowers for the spring and summer in the pots outside the shop. It sounds mundane, but it was a lot of fun.

We'd like to thank the extremely nice and helpful people at Austin's Garden Center on Signal Mountain Road for being so great. They helped us pick out the right kind of plants, soil, and fertilizer for our needs, and gave us all kinds of great tips -- thanks guys! And they're big on organic stuff.