I think I'm gonna go ahead and start so we
can end on time. I am Dr. Maria Elisa Christie
. I'm director of Women and Gender and international development
here at the Office of International Research Education Development.
Welcome to our 3rd and Final Women Gender Development Discussion
Series for the Semester. We're happy that you could
join us and also the people joining us on webex
from the national capital region Virginia Tech. So there's
a new statement I'm going to read that was developed
as part of inclusivity and that is to acknowledge that
this event is being held on the traditional lands of
the people who are the original custodians of this land
. You know, if anybody has a chance to
go to the farmers market, one of the events
for the Indigenous heritage Month, we had a group
of Monaca tribe, young people and old people telling
stories playing the jones dancing for the group, right
? She said, you know that's where we are
built on. So there's a sign up sheet.
Some people sign in when they came in back there
, there's another one going around. Please be sure
to sign up. You can choose if you want
to be on our list. Er if you do
, we just use it to announce this, we
don't spam you and and if you don't want to
sign up, please, if you don't want to
be on the list of, please go ahead and
sign up anyway and tell us what class you're here
with or if your students and what's your stuff.
All right. We have great agenda for next semester
as well. We have three outside speakers, including
um somebody from Burkina, Faso in West africa and
somebody from Guatemala in central America. That's on our
website, which is on the r A D website
bt dot E D U. And then it's a
gender page there. I'm glad to show you where
the pages afterwards if you want. Our next presenter
is Amanda Crump who will be not Not this man
to man doesn't get many, many Trump is going
to be talking about strategies to limit gender-based violence and
international agricultural development. And the first one of the
next semester is February six. So Amanda Tanner's presentation
will last about 40 minutes. Then we have 10
minutes of questions and answer and then we'll stop so
people can leave and get to class it's work and
then whoever wants to stay and ask her questions can
come up. We have the room for another half
hour after that. Now to introduce Amanda, Amanda
is the founder and owner of living threads company social
enterprise that provides market access and business development opportunities to
small scale artisans around the globe. She's in Virginia
tech columbus, it holds up political science B.
A. From 2006 and then went on to do
her Masters at BRANDEIS University in Sustainable International Development.
She has extensive experience working internationally, including working in
West Africa in Peace Corps's um and five years of
living and managing development programs in Central America. During
her international based fieldwork, she developed relationships with artisan
families and co operatives who lacked access to year round
markets and business development opportunities. And that led her
to find her company. She now travels the world
with a mission to empower women and improve livelihoods.
Here you are share your knowledge is today. Thank
you. A P. M. Yeah. Start
with this. We'll see how we do. Standing
in one place. I'm really excited to be here
today. Thank you very much for having me.
Um This is you know I don't get that many
opportunities to come back to Blacksburg, but I always
love my time here. Um So today I'm going
to talk a little bit about my background and the
reasons that I came to found living thread scope kind
of my experiences working internationally, and then I'm going
to focus a bit more on what I do with
living threads, how we work um and then opportunities
that I see for the future. Um All right
, so as you kind of heard, um I
graduated from Virginia Tech and Political Science and women's Studies
, I had the opportunity to study abroad while I
went to school here, which kind of got me
hooked on traveling and really getting to know communities abroad
um and spending the time there to invest and get
to know kind of cultural culture language. I think
I really realized how important that was in order to
do sustainable development. Um So I spent two years
in West africa. Um I then came back to
the United States was sort of a critical perspective of
international development work and I got my masters from BRANDEIS
University in International sustainable development um and then that my
graduate work took me to Honduras, And then I
spent the next kind of 4-5 years living in Guatemala
Nicaragua. Uh and hunter is doing sustainable at work
. While I was down there, I was able
to develop close relationships with women's cooperatives and families that
we've. Um and that's kind of what took me
to living breads. All right, so some of
the challenges um safe and sustainable employment, both um
you know in in Guatemala and Nicaragua and the Gambia
, I think we all are well aware of kind
of the problems um that a lot of communities face
as far as having sustainable access to jobs, whether
it's in agriculture, um men traveling to work,
men and women traveling to work um in coffee,
harvesting coffee, um or whether it's, you know
, in the case of a lot of the artisans
I worked with in Nicaragua, the women would make
food and sell it to tourists, but that market
was really unstable. So the challenge there was year
round sustainable access to employment. Uh and then as
far as um gender, um the challenge was really
development programs that were able to address these challenges,
but we're inclusive. Um I saw programs in Gambia
while I was a Peace Corps volunteer that focused on
microcredit loans to women, but it was a really
big focus on giving the money to women without really
understanding, but you couldn't just hand money to women
without kind of passing through to the hands of men
. So that was kind of a big lesson learned
access to markets. So this was a big part
of founding living threads. Co artisans across the world
just lack sustainable markets. Um whether it's in Nepal
where artisans work within the Himalayas, where there's really
very little access and infrastructure or in Guatemala, we
have to travel by boat or in Nicaragua where there's
more infrastructure where I work, but but the market
is tourists um and that fluctuates a lot given the
time of year or security um and the preservation of
traditional art uh and culture. So groups that I
work with in Guatemala have been weaving on my back
strap looms for thousands of years, but these practices
are traditionally passed down from grandmother's mother to daughter.
Um but those practices are dying with the influx of
really cheap textiles from the west, So really an
effort to kind of diversify their products and find new
markets for them. What's really important. I also
saw, you know, both in central America and
in West africa, a lack of cultural understanding.
Um, and you know, this too often development
projects kind of going with these assumptions of what the
need is and what the solution is. Um,
for example, in um, in Gambia as a
Peace Corps volunteer, there was an organization that came
in and they had decided that education was really important
. Um, and so they wanted to pay for
all the Children's school fees. Um, so that
this was a place where, you know, school
fees where maybe$5 a year, families had,
you know, they had prioritized that money. They
knew it was important and they were already paying for
the school fees. So the organization comes in,
they take over that responsibility. The family no longer
feels like they need to prioritize it. And then
when the organization leads, those kids are pulled out
of school. Um, so I think I saw
a lot of, you know, very damaging impacts
that these, you know, projects and organizations could
have without really understanding what the needs and challenges were
. And without having those projects come really from the
grassroots up. Um, and then from kind of
a consumer Western perspective. Um, looking at our
textile industry and fashion in general. Um, uh
, this is something that coming from international development,
I didn't know that much about until I started getting
into kind of the business side, um, of
, um, of fashion and home textiles. But
if the textile industry in general is um, one
of the most damaging industries that we have our planet
and communities and individuals, um, second only to
oil. Um so you can see kind of the
, you know, from production of cotton and other
fibers to the delivery to end consumers, um there's
a whole lot of waste. Um and this is
, I'm gonna copy out this little clip here,
it's a little bit dramatic, but I think that's
a really good job of kind of pulling together what
some of the dangers are We communicate who we are
through clothing. It is fundamentally a part of what
we wish to communicate about ourselves. We used to
have a system, a fashion system that has absolutely
nothing to do with the fashion industry today. It
has been reinvented, it's based on materialism. The
problem is that comes at a really high price garment
factory collapsed, killing more than 1000 between November,
another major factory garment workers in Bangladesh national team,
the price for cheap clothing. What the promise of
globalization was that it was going to be a win
win. That consumers in the rich world would get
cheaper goods and people in the poorer parts of the
world get jobs and that those jobs will give them
an opportunity to work their way out of poverty.
This enormous repay cious industry that is generating so much
profit. Why is it that it is unable to
support millions of its workers properly? The actual business
model is completely unsustainable. Unless you change that model
, you can't change anything when everything is concentrated on
making profits. What you see is that human rights
, the environment workers' rights get lost. My God
, you can do better than this. All right
. It's always difficult for me to watch. Uh
That is a documentary culture cost. I don't know
if anybody has seen that, but um it's really
interesting and worth walking watching um and really makes you
think a lot about, you know, our we
tend to become I think we're becoming more and more
accustomed to super cheap products um and the impact that
really has around the world. Okay. So I've
highlighted kind of stomach that challenges are the problems that
I saw working, you know, both in international
development um in the field um and then kind of
starting up my company. Um So what we kind
of decided um working with the artisans um is that
we needed a couple of different things, right?
Um Artisans, I work with groups who already leave
, so all of the women and men that I
work with, their their their tradition has been passed
down typically generations from generation and not teaching anybody how
to weave or create anything that's something that they already
do. Um And what they've identified as a need
is a sustainable access to markets. Right? So
year round they have sustainable income to provide for their
families. Um and then part of that is capacity
building. So these are often really small groups that
aren't super well organized, they lack access to making
email account, are they going to use a computer
or don't speak any english? Um and so kind
of doing capacity building on, you know, how
are we pricing goods? Um what is kind of
your position in this global market? How do we
value, you know, raw material costs, time
, all of all of these things. So working
together with them to identify with their training needs are
um and then through living threats, we have a
micro credit and training program. So we partner with
local nonprofit to really know the complexities um of,
you know, their specific um, you know,
context where they're working so that they are better able
to provide those trainings because as we grow and start
working with new groups like in Nepal and India where
I haven't spent as much time, those local partnerships
have become really important. Um, and then consumer
education is actually something that I didn't at first think
it's going to be such a big part of what
I do. Um, but it really has,
I think just like the true cost, uh,
little clip showed, um, people are very disconnected
from kind of this, um, the production and
the environmental and social and personal costs of this kind
of consumer culture in the way that we produce things
. And so it's really hard to explain to somebody
, you know why it's so you go to play
pay a little bit more for something. Um,
and so kind of connecting consumers to not only you
know, the product but to the people in the
culture in the process by which it was made,
it's really important. Um So living threads was born
. Um so what I do is um I go
down and work directly with our artisans and we create
kind of custom products that are inspired by local culture
uh and the environment but have kind of a modern
design to them so that they're more marketable here in
the States. So our mission is to preserve our
artisan groups traditions and improve livelihoods, but while providing
high quality handmade textiles to consumers here in the States
um around the globe. Okay. Um so the
how um we're doing this in a number of different
ways, like I said, the relationships that I've
developed with groups has become really important, especially initially
. Um but partnerships have become more important as we've
grown and being able to grow and work with different
groups in different countries. Um And then the training
of those artisans to make sure that we're fairly pricing
goods has also been really important kind of as we
started. Um But we sell currently, we do
e commerce um and then we sell in pop up
shops that we do direct to customers directed consumers and
retail and then also wholesale. So we're kind of
as a new company and especially for me personally,
coming from a background in international development, learning the
whole business side of things has been a process and
I've learned a whole lot from it. And so
partnering with other people who are into sustainable business um
and social enterprise has been really important. Um and
learning, you know, how how do we price
our goods fairly both to the artisans that we work
with and the end consumer. Um So I.
Um are artisans or who define all of our prices
and then we just through training um make sure that
all of the indirect costs are accounted um into the
way that they calculate their cost. Um And I
will say that it's it's most often the case that
artisans undervalue their product as opposed to over value it
. So we worked really hard to make sure that
everybody is kind of taking into consideration, you know
the raw materials, labor time and maintenance kind of
overhead and administration and then kind of set goals for
where we'd like to go. Um This is just
a little infographic that kind of shows um the way
that we work again um Working directly with artisans and
then connecting um the end consumer directly to the product
and the artisan, him or herself. Um and
then how we reach customers, both e commerce,
some direct retail and wholesale. Um and you know
, for us kind of investing in our human capacity
, that's kind of like the foundation of living threads
go. And so that's where the micro credit and
training becomes really important to kind of build our foundation
. Um and it's also really important to us because
we as a small business can't meet the needs of
all the groups that we work with, they could
produce much more than we are able to purchase from
them. So we help connect them to markets locally
, whether it's eco resorts that need you know,
textiles for their beds or hotels that cell. So
we kind of worked to diversify who they sell to
in country as well. All right, this is
um just a short little video that uh is of
our artisans in Guatemala to kind of get a sense
of the creation of just one product. I hope
so, wow, okay, yeah, mm just
all mhm, mhm. So mhm, Mhm,
Mhm. Oh thank you, yeah, yeah.
Mhm. Yeah, right, um and I'll give
you a little bit of context, let me know
if you guys can't hear me, but so I
have here some samples of the di the natural dye
that is used with a cotton, so afterwards feel
free to come up here and you can kind of
touch and look at the different die sources, but
it's really fascinating, all of the bright and amazing
colors that they can get out of. You know
, things like bark showed there um you know just
leaves of different trees, coffee carrots, even bugs
, um and this is something also, you know
knowledge that's been passed down generation by generation. Um
and then in Guatemala as you saw they leave on
a Mayan back strap loom. Um so this scarf
here is an example of natural dye recycled cotton that
was woven on a back strap loom. Um and
I was recently in Nepal, we just started working
with a group there and um I had the opportunity
to do some hiking in the Himalayas while I was
there and came across a woman in her home waving
on the exact same back strap loom that's used by
the Mayan indigenous of Guatemala. It was really fascinating
for me to be so far apart, but then
see, you know, this same artisan tradition that's
been around for so long um in such different places
and used in in different ways. Um but those
artisans still are facing the same challenges right of of
access to markets and the this influx of western clothing
and no need to kind of create their own fabrics
there. And then in Nicaragua on our website,
you can see some video of those artisans moving.
Uh this is lily. Um she's one of the
members of the family there. Um but and actually
the sewing machine, there was part of a microcredit
program that we did so that they can kind of
expand their product line um and sell larger queen bed
blankets to local hotels. um and these here are
some of the products that they produce, also 100
cotton but woven on large foot pedal looms that the
there's one man who leaves with everybody. So with
a grandmother who started the cooperative. Uh huh.
And then she's taught kind of her sons and daughters
how to weave. Um So her son, Uber
, he builds all of their looms out of recycled
reclaimed wood around town. So it's just a fascinating
process. They've had to be um you know really
creative and think outside the box um for bobbin winder
for example, they use the old fan motor.
Um So just really cool things, you know,
they lack access to all of these, you know
um machines and um you know, they can't just
go buy a bobbin winder so they make it there
with what they have. Um So some of the
challenges um as you could probably imagine watching that video
, um natural dyes are really hard to control,
right? So um quality control has been really difficult
and something that we focused on a lot with our
artisans um you make a batch of cotton with some
bark or some coffee and the color is going to
be different every single time you do that based on
the season, how much rain you've had when the
fruit or the vegetable or whatever was harvested. Um
, So in thinking about the company in general and
how we can have a larger impact and more artisans
in thinking about scalability, that's, you know,
really large challenge for us. So it's had to
kind of go into the way that we think about
how we can grow as a company. Thinking about
these challenges as far as quality control. Uh,
and then also organization. Um, so you know
, working with groups who just kind of, uh
, you know, originally, um, not all
the members worked full time. There some kind of
focusing a lot on development and capacity building of groups
to be able to say what they want to do
, how big they want to grow as well.
A lot of these women have families. Um,
and I will say most, most of the groups
are primarily women, but there are definitely been involved
in a lot of different ways and especially in Nepal
, I tend to see a lot more male weavers
. I'm so involving everybody and that has been really
important, kind of overcoming some of these organizational challenges
. Okay, so opportunities, and I think despite
there being a lot of challenges, just the artisan
handmade market in general as a force for development and
creating positive lasting social change is huge. I'm really
excited about it. Um, there are organizations like
Alliance for Artisan Enterprise, um, and if you
guys check out their website, you can see just
a lot of similar companies to living breads who work
with artisans all around the world. Um, and
I think that consumers also are at a point where
they're kind of demanding more accountability out of businesses in
looking for more sustainable products. So that's been,
you know, I think there's a lot more that
we need to do as far as consumer education um
which is why it's also kind of an opportunity.
Um but I think that people are are kind of
demanding more out of their products and and out of
their companies that they that they support. Um And
then another huge one obviously is sustainability and buying.
Um For me when I was working in development,
some of the most successful projects that I saw were
those where the participants were really invested in what we
were doing and those were often my group business projects
. Um So these, you know these are families
and cooperatives who this is their livelihood, this is
what they do deprive for their families um and it's
something that they love to do okay. Um also
economic growth and livelihoods is very much related to the
sustainability and buying and potential for growth. Um but
with the group that I work with in Nicaragua,
even just over the past kind of year to 16
months we've seen their individual incomes triple so a family
or individual making About$60 a month, which is
fairly typical in Nicaragua. Those women and men are
now making up to$250 to$300 a month.
Um And that cooperative has also been able to hire
more people and have a larger impact in their community
. Um Women in traditional gender gender roles. Um
So I mentioned before, you know typically this is
kind of an industry or area where it's typically a
lot of women um and I think putting kind of
a different value on the work that they're doing and
showing that it has a lot of potential for income
generation um makes these women, you know, strong
actors within their homes. Um And then kind of
for me it's always been about being really inclusive with
both men and women. Um and making sure that
the men feel as invested and involved as the women
do and making sure that eventually, you know,
women are being but into decision making a kind of
administrative roles, whether it's a cooperative with a formal
board or just a family. Uh And then environment
obviously a lot of opportunities supporting small scale artisans um
is a wonderful way like the products are already very
sustainable using natural dyes and utilizing all of their local
resources. Um So it was very easy to kind
of really support that and build it up. Um
As opposed to a lot of the kind of mass
produced and then um chemicals that are used in a
lot of that chemical dice. All right, well
, it's a kind of summarize I think that,
you know, I have worked in international development also
now, sustainable business. And I definitely think with
all of the different challenges there are within development,
it's really important that we approach this with sort of
a multi disciplinary approach. There are challenges that,
you know, we need direct aid, immediate aid
for. There are things that need long term nonprofit
development projects and programmes for research. Um but I
do think that social enterprise is this kind of growing
um you know, force that you should be able
to make money um and really solve these big social
problems. Um and then for me, um it
always comes back to kind of the reason that I
started the company and the reason that I'm really passionate
about, you know, they're beautiful textiles and the
impact that we can have by supporting these individuals on
a small scale. So this is Donna lia,
she's the grandmother of the group in Nicaragua and they
were kind of kind of the inspiration to starting the
company. So I would like to finish with her
all right. And one last quote from from Donnelly
of the grandmother, she once said to me,
I was asking her why she likes the work that
she does and why she's a weaver. And she
said that you know, weaving and creating these things
that only allows her to be um you know,
personally expressed her own creativity and provide for her family
, but it also allows her to show the rest
of the world that, you know, she may
be from a poorer countries, maybe from Nicaragua,
but that, you know, she has a Nicaraguan
can produce these very useful and beautiful things. Um
So I think it's kind of building you know those
those relationships and her personal development which inspire me each
day. Thank you one person. So I would
love to take questions we have at a time for
questions. Yeah. Yes. So you kind of
alluded to it, but the Nicaragua's I know about
the maquilas, you know the fact the sweatshops,
some people call them the factories for international clothing.
So what impact does that have on artisan, you
know goods if you will find, you said something
about it, I think you kind of alluded to
it. But have you observed an impact that those
those kinds of operations have had traditional leaving? And
then the other question is Guatemala. So until what
would be a great outlet Mark market, but can
the people you work with actually access markets and a
table or is that a problem? Um Yeah,
so I guess starting with the Nicaragua question um in
my experience, but I've seen to be kind of
impacting the most is the influx of western clothing income
, the like the jobs and the factories there.
I think those um those are low skill kind of
more dangerous and lowing paid, low paid jobs for
um you know women and men like I know uh
several members of the family cooperative where I work,
they used to work in some of those factories.
Um and so this was a really wonderful alternative for
them because they can be doing their own work and
be safe and with their families and earning more,
I'm not quite sure what those like where what they're
creating, what they're producing those factories. And then
with Guatemala we try to, like I said,
connect a lot of our artisan groups to those markets
locally. Um So in Guatemala, but I think
even for that local market there's kind of a lack
of organization on part of most of the small scale
co operatives and so there's several that have really kind
of been able to infiltrate those higher interests there and
sell their goods. Um but the groups that we
work with are kind of much smaller and lack the
capacity initially to really have a higher end quality product
and so through training um and you know, us
working together, we're able to identify different markets for
them in Guatemala as well. But yeah, I
mean I think that would be our goal, as
I would like to see the groups that I work
with in Guatemala sell their products in Guatemala and a
lot of those places in Antigua. Yes, so
your model is really successful and people seem to gain
a lot out of it when they join living threads
, but could you explain how you go about the
process for identifying um groups that you choose to connect
with and then how do you create that partnership,
because coming in as an outsider? Um I would
imagine you've been doing this for a while, so
now you have some really great success stories, but
how do you go about gaining that trust when people
feel that they've been doing it? Maybe they haven't
been doing as successfully economically, but getting them to
join you instead of um living in their more isolated
business sense. Yeah, so like I said,
I only work with groups are really looking for markets
, so I mean if I feel like I need
to convince somebody to work with me, then it's
probably not a good fit. Um, and the
groups that I originally started working with, I knew
really well just because I was living, I lived
in Leon Nicaragua, I lived in Santiago in Guatemala
. So I was, I got to know them
over several years actually before I even started the company
. Um, but now moving forward as we grow
. Um, that's a very valid question, right
? Like how do I identify groups that we want
to work with? Um, and it comes both
from kind of my network on the ground, but
also reaching out to other players who are based in
the country's where we work. So in Nepal,
for example, it's reaching out to Peace Corps volunteers
to local nonprofits and kind of building a network.
There are people who are on the ground and know
what's going on much better than I could ever from
here, and not having invested years and really getting
to know those communities. Um so I utilize local
nonprofits and Peace Corps volunteers, like I said,
a variety of different people to kind of help do
needs assessment and identify great groups that might be interested
. Um Then it's really up to those groups,
whether whether they're interested in working with living threads.
Can you talk a little bit about how this business
is structured in terms of, you said that you're
doing training that you're businesses? First of all one
was started a few minutes or yourself? It's the
most here. Yeah, so. Mhm. Yeah
, so super small right now started, I've been
doing uh this for about a year, full time
, um and so started the company about two years
ago. Um So I have um different uh people
who work with me in the States to manage our
retail locations. Um And I'm the primary person who
does kind of relationship and product development with all of
our artisans. Um And like I said we sell
on e commerce and direct retail and wholesale but still
like definitely in a figuring out what sort of structure
long term is gonna work for us. Um Kind
of exploring to like the idea of having a nonprofit
component to the development work that we do. There's
a lot of different legal structures that you can set
a company up as. Um We'll see uh social
benefit, core benefit corp. Um And so kind
of learning like you know what would work best for
us, we're still doing. Um but the numbers
in that last video of providing, I think it
said$5,000 to that one family. Um that was
last year. So I would say that this year
we probably did three times that for that one family
. And then we've also been able to expand the
number of artisan partners that we work with impacting um
About 260 artisans. Um, so just kind of
your networking and having these separate channels to reach customers
, we've been able to grow. Um but still
like very much in a learning phase and trying to
figure out like strategically where we want to go question
, yep, you just talk about the this association
between the cost of something and how it's made.
I was curious looking on the website and how like
the price tag and you said that it's made by
women or was made. Have you considered exploring changing
how we actually look at price tags as well with
the work that you're doing? So that is actually
connected to a person right on that product page or
explaining like you did here, we have the benefit
of knowing that took two days to potentially make and
then tying from that information into that advertising structure,
right with the product so that people are becoming more
aware of every purchase. Yeah, I think that's
a great idea. I think there are some companies
that, that I've learned a lot from who do
that really well. Um also, um so like
being very transparent about pricing, I don't, I'm
not gonna remember the name of the company right now
, but basically we'll lay out like this t shirt
, this much goes directly to Artisan, this is
that cost, that's something we've been trying to kind
of put together and be able to articulate in a
better way. So yeah, I think that's that's
a really great idea. Um it's also can become
like super labor intensive to try to tell. Um
such a oftentimes complex story about every product, particularly
when you're talking about like, you know, a
scarf like this that's handmade and natural diet and we
will only have one of these. So how much
energy do I put into selling this one scarf?
And then I have to do that again for every
other piece of natural dyed products. So it's kind
of trying to find something that, you know,
tells the story well, is transparent and fair to
the consumer into the artisan, but that is realistic
and manageable for a small company to do anybody else
. No, well, thank you very much for
having me. I've learned a lot from your questions
as well. Every time I come here and have
wonderful discussions with with everybody, um I learned a
lot. So I appreciate the invitation and for you
guys coming here today. Thank you.