(This is an article on Gone Rural BoMake, an NGO here in Swaziland, based on a visit to their site and interview with the a director. Please check out their website for more detailed information on what they do in different areas of the community).
At Waterford, all IB students are involved in various sorts of community service, but we each have at least one "big" project to work on each year. This year, my two big projects are a women's empowerment group, and the computer classes that I started teaching last year.
Yesterday, our women's empowerment group went to visit Gone Rural BoMake, a group that creates an extra source of income for rural women by selling handicrafts that the women make, mostly from grass and recycled materials. The organization then sells the handicrafts to upmarket shops overseas, using some of the profits for the women's income, and some to support other community projects, such as a mobile medical unit and paying for school fees for OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children).
Walking into Gone Rural, there's a large mosaic on the wall reading "Sukumani, bomake!" (translating roughly into "Stand up, mothers!"). The lawn was lined with racks of dyed grass, drying after being colored. The way the group works, the women gather grass from where they are, and give it to Gone Rural in exchange for grass that has been dyed. The cost of the dye is part of the business plan for the NGO, and so there are no supply costs to the women.
At that moment, it started pouring rain, as it often tends to do in Swaziland, and so we all crammed inside a second barn, where the rural women were selling their handicrafts to Gone Rural. At the beginning of each year, the women decide on a price they would like to recieve for a certain item. Thereafter, anybody who makes that item will recieve the same price from Gone Rural for it. Gone Rural buys the handicrafts from the women for this price, and then marks them up to sell to the outlets abroad, to make money to pay for dyes and administrative costs. The outlets abroad then mark them up even more, which is why there are grass placemats for fifteen US dollars.
After that, we went into their storeroom, where they keep the completed products that are waiting to shipped off to the shops. The stores were truly stunning, with stacks of beautifully woven baskets from ceiling to floor, in all sorts of colors, shapes, and different varieties. There were baskets made of grass, recycled materials, and even t-shirt scraps from a factory in Mbabane. Some had ceramic bits in the centers, and some were just grass.
As someone who has lived in America for the majority of my life, I have indeed encountered shops selling this sort of stuff as "African" and "tribal," and I wonder what to think about it. If people abroad are really into these styles, and really like grass placemats and baskets, then more power to them! But, I wonder how much of the business is created on the portrayal of the rural women as some sort of charity case, who need support through these purchases, and how much this mindset funds the NGO. While it's great that this can be a source of income for the women, on a global scale, I'm not comfortable with the fashion being charity - especially such ignorant charity. And, judging by the names of the companies selling the items, I wonder whether the retail of these sorts of products abroad furthers the ignorant consolidation of Africa into one landmass of grass mats and baskets. There was a pile of baskets going to "Kalahari," an Australian retailer. I wonder whether the customers of that company could differentiate between where the Kalahari is, and where Swaziland is. (Hint - far away). There was a pile of placemats going to an American company called "Ten Thousand Villages," and I don't think that's going to help with America's perception of Africa, either.
But, nothing is perfect, and BoMake has created something that is relatively sustainable, and seemed to be doing an effective job providing some extra income to the women. But, from the perspective of a representative of a women's empowerment group, I wanted to know what the NGO was really doing to empower the women, beyond providing them with an extra income.
Now, before I continue, I want to make it clear that BoMake is doing good work, providing a mobile clinic, and a support structure for these women and their familes that would probably not otherwise exist. But, I am less positive about how they are creating an empowering environment to these women.
I asked the woman in charge how long women tend to work for Gone Rural on average, making these handicrafts. I was hoping to hear that Gone Rural was a stepping stone for women to start their own businesses, or get involved in something of their own choosing, but that wasn't the case. To the woman's credit, she said that the NGO helps to pay for funeral costs, but that's not exactly the empowering answer that I was looking for. Once a woman starts working for Gone Rural, it doesn't seem like there's much of a chance for any stepping up beyond being an artisan. Admittedly, it's better than nothing, but it doesn't really strike me as the creation of a ladder, which is what I tend to think of women's empowerment as. Whether or not people choose to use it is another issue, but the ladder has to be there. This ladder, while it was technically there, had only one rung, and then nothing else.
I wish that groups like this would educate the women in business techniques and entrepreneurship skills, which could be transferred, should they choose to pursue other work. Weaving grass, while providing an income in this one environment, isn't the most transferable skill.
The woman then elaborated that the women's daughters oftentimes start working for Gone Rural when they turn sixteen, which is the youngest age that the company will allow. At this point, I couldn't help but wonder how empowering something really is, if even as generations pass, people find themselves in the same position. Sure, they're no longer at the bottom, but it's as though their ceiling is so much lower than everybody else's.
I'm not sure what else to say. It just feels like another story of an NGO that is doing really good work, but still struggles to find a way to balance charity, aid, empowerment, and the humanity and dreams of everyone involved. And I suppose that's the issue that is always faced in community service, whether it's here in Swaziland, or anywhere.
