Global Girlfriend Women Artisan Groups

Afghanistan

Women for Women International In Country Office
With a per capita income of $175 to $220, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Lack of security and limited education and economic opportunities remain some of the major challenges for women as they struggle for a voice in the country's post-Taliban era reconstruction process. The Women for Women International Afghanistan office provides micro-credit, health care, literacy, and skills training to women in need. More than 6,472 women received program services in 2005. Current job skills trainings include knitting, embroidery, dressmaking and stitching, creative home design, dairy production, gardening and fruit growing, weaving, medicinal herb growing, poultry farming, jewelry-making, shoe-making and carpentry.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Women for Women International In Country Office
Very few formal sector employment opportunities exist for women in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many women are the sole breadwinners in their families, as their husbands were killed or injured during the war or they lost previous jobs in state enterprises. With a current unemployment rate of approximately 40 percent for the country overall, and 45 percent for women, Women for Women International Chapter office has been a leader in providing women with support and economic opportunities through micro-credit and enterprise programs.

Brazil

Coopa-Roca
Located in South America's largest shantytown, Coopa-Roca provides disadvantaged women the opportunity to contribute to their family budget without having to neglect their childcare and domestic lives. Apart from providing work that generates income for the women, Coopa-Roca also focuses on improving the women's professional skills, health and self-esteem.

India

Conserve India
Conserve is an Indian non-profit founded in 1998 that employs poor women as rag pickers to scour the New Delhi waste dumps to collect discarded plastic bags and then amazingly turn trash into high fashion handbags. Conserve is not only finding environmental solutions for their community, but they are employing, empowering and uplifting 300 low caste women and families who had no employment opportunities before Conserve.
 

NEED
NEED is a NGO based in Lucknow that provides women in poverty with employment, training, marketing, gender and human rights education.

Gramshree Trust
Manav Sadhna's economic development project Gramshree Trust creates and sells hand-made products as a part of their Earn-and-Learn and Empowerment projects. By buying our Hippie Chic Flower Tote made from appliqué designs, you are participating in Manav Sadhna's efforts to eliminate child labor, get kids into school, and empower women to be economically independent.

Godavari Delta Women Lace Cooperative
The cooperative provides a market vehicle for the lace making skills that the women of the Gvodavari River basin have been perfecting for over 100 year. The women are proud to be a part of the cooperative which offers not only good pay but also provides skills and literacy training.

Tara Project
Tara Project is a fair trade organization based in New Delhi. The project seeks to help craftswomen gain awareness, rights and human dignity in order to combat poverty. Tara provides women with economic security through regular work at living wages, craft training and marketing services.

Teddy Exports
Teddy Exports is a fair trade cooperative from the Tamil Nadu region of southern India. The organization provides sustainable employment and good pay for more than 300 craftswomen and men. Craftswomen and their families also have the benefit of a community health center that provides a child health project and education about prenatal care, childbirth, sex and AIDS awareness.

Indonesia

Arumdalu
Arumdalu is a fair trade organization based in Bali that has been supporting low-income artisans in Indonesia for over 25 years. Arumdalu aims to help women develop a market for their beautiful handicrafts in order to help them create sustainable incomes and keep traditional crafts and skills alive.

Nepal

Girl's Friend Nepal
Global Girlfriend helped launch this young women's enterprise paper making project in partnership with Nepal based General Welfare Pratisthan. The project works to train and employ young women survivors of sex trafficking, providing income and hope to rebuild their lives.

KTS
KTS is an educational and vocational training institute catering to the needs of the low income families from poor castes in Nepal. Women are provided vocational training opportunities in hand knitting, carpet weaving and furniture, enabling them to make a living wage and care for themselves and their families.

Sana Hastakala
Sana Hastakala in Nepal translates as "small producer". This premier fair trade organization in Nepal that provides women a good living wage, skills training, health care and added emergency financial support when needed. The organization works with several small women's cooperatives in order to create a market for their products.

Wild Earth Nepal
Located in Kathmandu, Nepal, Wild Earth contributes to women's rural economic development in Nepal through the sale of herbal products. The Himalayan region is a vast storehouse of medicinal and aromatic plants, which have been used by indigenous people for healing and ritual purposes since ancient times. Wild Earth employs fair trade practices in making it's handmade herbal natural soaps.

Nicaragua

Women's Sewing Cooperative of Nueva Vida
The Women's Sewing Cooperative of Nueva Vida allows women to escape the pitiful wages, horrible labor conditions, long hours, rapes and murders that are associated with the sweatshops found in this region. All of the women in this organization are owners, and they alone decide how they are treated. The women have built a sewing facility, a market for their shirts, a new childcare facility and a future for themselves and their children.

South Africa

Project Gateway
Project Gateway is a non-profit organization housed in the old Pietermaritzburg prison in the Kwazulu Natal region of South Africa. The project's ultimate goal is to raise well-equipped entrepreneurs to run their own sustainable, profit making businesses freeing women from the prejudices of South African life.

Shuttleworth Weavers
Shuttleworth Weavers employs disadvantaged women in the KwaZulu Natal region of South Africa. Weaving provides vital income for the women in this rural area where other employment opportunities are rare. Some of the women are able to spin the yarn in their own homes while taking care of their children. Others come together in a workshop hand dying and weaving their goods.

Tanzania

African Crafts by Gertrude
From the village of Usa River near the city of Arusha in north-central Tanzania, Gertrude Protas Kitia uses the ancient art of Masai beadwork in both traditional and contemporary designs and techniques.Gertrude has created these handicrafts as long as she can remember and teaches them to the young women of her rapidly growing village, which is in great need of economic development. Her women's cooperative produces jewelry long worn by East Africa's Masai people which incorporates specific and different patterns, forms, and shapes using the basic building blocks of tiny glass or porcelain beads.
 

United States

The Enterprising Kitchen, Chicago
The Enterprising Kitchen provides transitional employment and life skills training to disadvantaged women in Chicago working toward self-sufficiency. Women from across the city are able to participate in an intensive, but individually oriented workforce development program that includes paid employment, work and life skills training and individualized support services.

WomanCraft, Chicago
WomanCraft is a work initiative of Deborah's Place, Chicago's largest women and children only homeless shelter. WomanCraft provides a supportive, realistic workplace where low-income women can earn wages, engage in meaningful work, improve job skills and build a work history.

Women's Bean Project, Denver
For over fifteen years, the Women's Bean Project has helped women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment. This employment development program teaches disadvantaged women workplace competencies for entry-level jobs within the context of a food mix production and catering business.

Appalachian By Design, West Virginia
Appalachian By Design is a non-profit development program that markets knitwear made by low-income women in rural areas of the Appalachian Mountains. The group has devoted itself to making knitting a sustainable, home-based industry for women in rural Appalachia and has even established a pension plan for women who might otherwise have no way to save for retirement.

Thistle Farms, Nashville
Named for the wildflower that grows on the road Nashville prostitutes frequent, Thistle Farms is a creative and sustainable workplace for residents of Magdalene, a not-for-profit recovery community for women with a criminal history of prostitution and drug abuse. Thistle Farms creates candles and body balms with the proceeds going to support Magdalene house residents as well as provide outreach to women who are in jail or still on the streets.

Rosie's Place, Boston
As Boston's largest women only homeless shelter, Rosie's Place strives to provide a safe and nurturing environment for poor and homeless women looking to maintain their dignity, seek opportunity and find security in their lives. The Women's Craft Cooperative of Rosie's Place creates a collaborative work environment where disadvantaged women obtain job readiness and craft skills.

Vietnam

Au Lac
Au Lac is a fair trade organization that was founded by a former Maryknoll volunteer to bring jobs to poor women living in Hanoi and the surrounding rural areas. The women are especially gifted in the traditional art of embroidery, and stitch beautifully detailed silk accessories and clothing.