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Crafting a living

Free Trade Artisan Initiative empowers women to better their lives

Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Melody Regalado - Florida Catholic correspondent

 

COURTESY PHOTO | ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY Women work with fabric to create crafts at the Women's Free Trade Artisan Initiative in Haiti.

MIAMI — In Haiti, poverty overwhelms and women normally don’t play active roles in providing for their households.

But the Women’s Free Trade Artisan Initiative is using the country’s natural resources to supply women with artistic tools they can use to support their children.

About 40 women in several parish-based groups in the Diocese of Port-de-Paix, in northwest Haiti, are finding empowerment through the initiative, which provides them with work, income and a sense of pride in the goods they produce.

“In the process they are learning and being trained as artisans and women running their own small businesses,” said Angelique Montgomery, an adjunct professor at St. Thomas University’s School of Theology and Ministry who coordinates the initiative. “They begin as apprentices and work their way up based on skill level.”

The women who are part of the initiative design and make art objects such as acrylic and oil paintings, linens and clothing, jewelry and dolls using banana leaves, wood and other materials found in their environment.

“These women produce great hand-made crafts, but don’t have the connections to sell them in the United States,” said Anthony Vinciguerra, coordinator of the Center for Justice and Peace at St. Thomas and project volunteer.

The role of the women’s counterparts in the U.S. is to coordinate the marketing of their products outside of Haiti. So far, their crafts have been selling successfully in Europe and the United States via their Web site, www.haitiartisancrafts.com.

One hundred percent of the profits go directly to the women, who manage the distribution of their own funds, a task which Montgomery says also teaches them responsibility skills.

With $90, the women can buy a manually-operated sewing machine, because electricity is unreliable, to become their own small businesses and make uniforms for the school children.

Montgomery says she has heard back from women who have replaced the roofs of their homes with metal ones, poured concrete flooring to replace the dirt, paid for school for their children and even bought dentures to be able to eat solid foods.

A documentary film about the project, “Blooming Hope: Harvesting Smiles in Port-de-Paix”, profiles one of the women, Tata Dumasie, a wife and mother of five from the town of Jean Rabel. She had been a restavec — a child who is forced into servitude because the parents cannot provide for her — since the age of six and said she did not want the same life for her children.

“These projects help build a society where they make a living off of things they produce and run themselves,” said Vinciguerra.

“This income literally changes their lives,” said Montgomery. “They take pride in the work they do and the fact that they can provide for their families.”