Portland Fair Trade

By Denise Attwood, co-owner, Ganesh Himal Trading

In 1986, Ganesh Himal Trading started working with the Association for Craft Producers (ACP) in Kathmandu, Nepal. This project, started by Meera Bhatterai, has the goal of helping raise marginalized women’s self-esteem and income generating skills.

Laxmi Maharjan was a woman who had woven all of her life but never seen the money from any of the work she had done. The  money she earned had always gone to the male in her life, her father or her husband.

When Laxmi had children, she put away her loom, but as her children grew she realized how badly she wanted to send them to school. Her husband’s work did not give them even enough for living let alone for school.

Laxmi approached ACP and asked if they would help her to put her loom back together,  market her weaving and earn money to send her children to school. ACP agreed, and Laxmi became a part of the ACP team doing traditional cloth weaving and teaching other women to weave.

Meera recalls that when Laxmi received her first pay, she cried. She explained that she cried because she had never before had power in her life, and now she did.

ACP helped Laxmi save her money, and she used it to send her three children to good schools. Laxmi herself had never had the opportunity to be educated, but she understood its value, particularly for girls. As a result, she sent her girl child as well as her boys to the same quality of school. Eventually, all of her children, with her money and encouragement, earned college level degrees.

When Laxmi first went to ACP, other women in her village became interested. With ACP’s help, Laxmi eventually organized 60 other women in her village to begin weaving, earning income and saving it on their own.

Laxmi’s work has brought economic viability and a huge change to the status of women in her village. Women have more say in their families’ decision making and have been able to influence the education and health of their children, particularly their girl children.

Laxmi’s daughter Sudha, who was educated with the money her mother earned from weaving, ended up not only learning the traditional weaving skills of her mother but also getting a Masters in Social Work. After graduation, Sudha worked for the Nepali government in a program for the blind. After several years of this work she realized that the most important social work she had ever seen was the work that her mother had done with the women weavers in her village.

Sudha decided that this was the work that she really wanted to do, so she returned to her village and has now taken over working with the weavers group to help market their products through ACP and provide for more training and help for the women.

In 2008, Sudha was asked by ACP to represent the organization at the Sante Fe International Folk Festival as a spokesperson for women weavers in Nepal. She was able to travel elsewhere in the U.S., speaking to groups about her mother’s work.

Ganesh Himal products are available in Portland at Ten Thousand Villages; Paloma Clothing; Trade Roots; and Mirador.

Tags: Add new tag, Ganesh Himal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Fair Trade, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.