Internet fuels women's empowerment through crafts and cooperativeventures

Women of India look for ways to make money with crafts as do women from underdeveloped countries

Across the world indigenous people offer their crafts in the marketplaces, but with the advent of the Internet more and more of the creations made by these talented people are becoming available to everyone, while providing opportunities for empowerment as well.

In Natchitoches, Louisiana the local Methodist church has a bazaar annually where the crafts of women are displayed, providing another way to reach the public with the cause of helping women in underdeveloped countries be able to earn a living.  The program of helping women in this way attracts many visitors to the church, where at the door church women sell the crafts and explain how they are made.  This is a way of bringing the world to a small town in the South and in a way that helps empower women too.

On a small island in Bali, the only Muslim island in the country, the people are so poor a woman of 40 appears as a very old woman.  The women on the island fashion crafts with cloth, tapestries for the wall and also clothes made from hand-woven fabric.  They work all day cross-legged on mats, as the sun beats savagely on the ground  hardened by soil and rain, as the women avert their eyes, focusing instead on the tasks before them, making something beautiful to sell.

While fair trade practices are highlighted by organizations around the world, the conditions under which many women make their crafts continues to be primitive in many areas, where they often work from early morning until late evening.  It is that environment that the women cannot escape, even as their crafts are made available around the world.

Still in many places women are doing well enough to band together to make demands they be paid fairly, that they are involved in the business itself as they emphasize the need not just to make a living, but earning it in conditions that do not rob them of their youth long before their time.

India's SAHAJ is one of those organizations  that provides women opportunities to sell crafts on the Internet and through organizations as well.  Women have become organized in clusters, self-sustaining groups where they learn the elements of business and working together, even as they improve the work itself.  They use a Common Facility Center model where raw materials are made available in the right way and to the right individuals.  Production is higher in these facilities.

Churches are involved in helping artisans and so are universities.  Carnegie Mellon at its Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is helping facilitate the empowerment of women by providing visitors with exhibits where they can view the crafts and learn of the culture and how many of the beautiful products are produced.  It is one of the ways to make contact with the public so that the markets for traditional crafts can be opened to the world.

Many of the self-sufficient groups that receive training come from that same principle used by the Peace Corps, not giving people fish but instead teaching them to fish, but in this case the fish are the raw materials that people learn how to use in an expanded way with one another and learn the business of marketing as well.

The Baha'is are among those religious groups most active in the empowerment of women in India.  In 1985 a vocational training center was developed by the Baha'is of India.  Barli Development Institute for Rural Women was established for the empowerment of rural and tribal women.  Its very name underlines the belief based on Baha'i principles that women are the central pillars of society and are equal to men.  This name highlights the belief of the Institute that women are the central pillars of the society.

While international groups proclaim the problems of poor women in indigenous cultures, many people are unaware that building communities through crafts and increasing markets for them is making a difference.  In fact, in India many women are able to sustain their families and become independent by learning to work in a community of women who bond, then band together to learn and to become proud of what they do.

As the world worries over the lot of women, the human trafficking, lack of education and domestic violence, there are changes that are making a difference in many indigenous cultures.  Those who want to help the cause of empowering women have only to peruse the local paper, to see where craft shows are held and ask if any of them support these cooperative ventures.  It is a way that everyone can be involved in lifting women out of poverty and helping them become educated and fully participating citizens in their cities around the world.