Empowering Women:
Artisan Cooperatives that Transform Communities
Gallery of Conscience July 4, 2010- May 8, 2011

ASIA

INDIA
Self-employed Women’s Association Trade Facilitation Center (SEWA)
Earning a Livelihood from Home
While some cooperatives are scaled to individual villages and rural communities, the Self-employed Women’s Association (sewa) Trade Facilitation Center includes over 3,500 artisan shareholders in 80 villages in India’s western state of Gujarat. The women — all skilled home-based embroidery and textile artisans — are the producers, managers, and owners of their collective livelihood. The women are involved in every phase of the business — including micro-financing, management training, social security, health, and child care services, product development, pricing, and quality control. For mirror embroiderer Kakuben Jivan Ranmal, this means earning a secure living while staying with her children. “I used to wander or migrate in search of work, keeping my very small children back at home. I was not able to think about my future, but today I feel most secured under the roof of my own house.” Photo: Kakuben Jivan Ranmal working with other textile artisans at the Sewa Trade Facilitation Center, 2010. Photograph courtesy of sewa.



LAO PDR- OckPopTok
Janakpur Women’s Development Center
East Meets West
A decade ago, two 20-something women — a London fashion photographer and the daughter of a master-weaver from the Mekong region of Lao Peoples Democratic Republic — came together to form the cooperative OckPopTok — which means “East Meets West.” Featuring exquisite silk and cotton weavings, this 21st century cooperative is as likely to sell wall hangings inspired by Mark Rothko as the traditional skirts woven with Laotian motifs. In 10 years, OckPopTok has grown from a one-room weaving studio for local weavers to an internationally recognized heritage destination, gallery, retreat center, and women’s weaving collaborative for over 200 artisans in three provinces and seven villages. But can cultural heritage and the modern global marketplace coexist? Joanna Smith, cofounder of the cooperative, is sure of it. “A healthy culture is a dynamic one,” Smith recently told an international newspaper, “and while respecting design tradition, we recognize that it, too, is constantly evolving. It reflects a living culture, rather than being the static mirror of history.” Photo: A Tai Lue woman from Ban Na Nyang teaches spinning cotton to a Tai Dam woman from Phongsaly, 2010. Photograph by Jack Parsons.

NEPAL-Janakpur Women's Development Center (ATA)
A Foreigner in the Village
When Claire Burkert, a New England college graduate, came to the Nepalese lowlands in 1989, she had no idea how her life, or the lives of the women artisans she so admired, would be changed forever. The women of the Maithili culture were renowned for painting designs on the mud walls of their village homes for weddings, naming ceremonies, festivals, and other occasions. Claire thought that if the women painted their beautiful, spontaneous images onto handmade paper, they could be sold to an outside market, and increase the socioeconomic status of the artisans. Manjula Devi Thakur, one of the first artists with whom Claire worked, reflects on how her life changed. “Now I can buy milk, pens and books, and pay the tuition for my children. I’m strong now. I can move ahead.” Today, more than 40 women of all ages and castes travel daily to the Janakpur Center where they work and eat together. “When I go outside sometimes people still criticize me,” Manjula says. “But I know if they don’t understand my life today, they’ll understand it tomorrow.” Photo: Ranibati Mukhiya (far right) sitting with relatives and neighbors next to her wall painting, 1989. Photograph courtesy of Claire Burkert.

Introduction | Africa | Americas | Acknowledgments




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