Well after a long day yesterday – 12 hours of report writing and working through baselines, evaluation forms and training reports – I was more than happy to be out and about visiting producers again today.
We set off bright and early, around 8am to visit the first group of the day, Cards from Africa. I mentioned this group on my blogs from my last trip in January this year. I couldn’t wait to meet again with Arthur, the manager to see how they had progressed over the last six months and to check out their new designs. I was not disappointed.
Arthur got chairs for Joan and me and we sat outside under a tree, sheltering from the intense heat of the African sun to hear about how they are doing.
Arthur was pleased that we were visiting during their busy season so we could see the organisation and production line at full throttle. People were busy everywhere we looked, soaking recycled paper to make the card, dying the materials and then finally making the designs.
The room was buzzing and this is an excellent example of fair trade at its finest.
All of the workers at Cards from Africa are genocide survivors and on top of that they are all from orphan headed households.
Arthur told us how much the training meant to him and his organisation.
Steven Kagarama (another employee that attended) said: “I learnt how to gather information on our workers, for example whose children go to school and whose do not. This information is important as it will provide us with knowledge about how we can better assist our workers; understand the challenges they are going through.
“The most important thing for me was that I learnt the practical implementation of the information provided and skills taught and how to bring this into the business. This was very interesting for me.”
We also met with Rachel, the lady we carried out a Shared Interest Foundation case study on in January. She is doing very well and was happy to hear that we had shared her story. She is extremely busy just now working on a big order and says that she likes working at Cards from Africa as she gets to learn new things and spend her days among friends.
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Read your artcile with interest, and ask, how production looks like, under the tree is meeting, is production also outside in a rural area of “survivors of the Geneozid (are they only of the 14% Tutsi ?) or are they working in urban environment.
I would like to know how much cards they “sell” annually to our Fairtrade partners. I estimate not much more than 10000-20000 pieces. Take me wrong please, if you have that figure in your case study. This is because I compare that to the “professional card producers in Nepal or Thailand and they have quite easy production conditions and good sales networks. So just my question: Is the impact really worth to introduce a non traditional technique (or is paper makeing a tradition in Ruanda, in Ghana it would not be ?) and does it give a subsitancial income to the makers ?
Sorry for my many critics, without even having the basic knowledge. May be you can link me the case study, then I can know more .
Thanks for your answers
Rosmarie
Thanks for your comment Rosmarie. You can learn more about us at http://www.cardsfromafrica.com . We produce the cards in a location on the outskirts of the city of Kigali. We sold about 80,000 cards on a fair-trade basis in 2008. Card staff now earn between 2 and 8 times what they were earning before coming to work at Cards from Africa, which is why we have a large number waiting to come as the demand for our cards increases. Paper-making is not traditional to Rwanda, but making crafts is.
Lastly, we do not discriminate who we employ – the only necessity is that both their parents have died, they have younger siblings they are responsible for, and they are not studying at the time of seeking employment. Although we don’t ask (this would be discrimination, illegal, and highly inappropriate considering Rwanda’s past) I am relatively certain CfA employs Rwandans from both groups that have been in Rwanda for the past few hundred years.
Kind regards,
Chris