Women in Business Development (WIBDI), Samoa

Talofa from Samoa.

Women in Business Development, Inc (WIBDI) was founded in 1991 as a small non-profit organization with focus on providing opportunities for families living in rural areas of Western Samoa. They do encourage the families to earn a living with the resources available to them, provide training, supervision and support plus give access to microfinance.

The strong family culture in Samoa shaped the way WIBDI is working. It focuses on individual families and not on individuals or villages. An extended family in Samoa can be a large community with members up to a hundred individuals. The head of the family is the point person and works directly with WIBDI. Over the years the organization found, that a family that can earn money for itself seems to be more committed to sustainable, long-term projects and willing to re-invest money into it.

Projects through this energetic group of women include traditional crafts like Siapo making, jewelry made from coconut and seashell, carving coconut bowls and fine mat weaving. A lot of the produced crafts are sold on the Samoan Islands and a smaller amount is send to overseas markets and retailers like World Travel Art.

WIBD started a bi-monthly organic market day in order to help rural organic farmers. All products offered on the market are certified by the "National Association for Sustainable Agriculture in Australia". Fresh fruit and vegetable, spices, cocoa, honey, pure cold pressed coconut oil and more are offered. Over time the markets became so popular that by now they seem to be part of Samoan way of life.

Women in Business Development clearly has become the link between small Samoan producers and the wider global market. They found ways to overcome obstacles like the remote island location, natural disasters and limited quantities that can be produced. The approach of focusing on individual families has proved to be successful and the strong, flexible mindset of the women in the organization will guarantee the success to go on.

Artesanas Campesinas (ARTCAMP)

ARTCAMP is a rural women's artisans cooperative in Tecalpulco, Municipality of Taxco in Mexico.

Located between the hills of Acapulco and about 100 miles southwest of Mexico City, Taxco, in the State of Guerrero, is one of the oldest silver mining sites in the Americas. It has retained its natural charm and colonial ambiance with red-tiled roofs and cobble stoned narrow streets. Silver Jewelry making goes back generations and the final pieces were always considered exquisitly beautiful in craftsmanship.

ARTCAMP was created in 1991 after the local handcrafted jewelry industry almost collapsed due to broad changes in fashion and fierce competition from Asia. Before the collapse, many families were employed and buyers came from all over to purchase the handcrafted jewelry of Tecalpulco. Suddenly the pieces were no longer considered valuable and price cuts were forced upon the humble producers of Mexican artisans.

Especially in rural areas like Tecalpulco now a day it is common that single women support their families without the support of husbands or fathers as men leave the villages in search for work in other areas of Mexico or the United States.

When a small foreign-owned factory went bankrupt the women who worked there determined to try and continue to employ themselves joined together and formed what was eventually constituted legally as Artcamp SC de RL. In response to a desperate situation, the women persevered, drew strength from a centuries-long cultural experience, they generated new timely designs and production forms and ultimately found markets for their products.

The years of the early 1990s were difficult and they lived from job to job and from hope to hope but never stopped to improve themselves.

Over the past years the women of ARTCAMP became well organized, efficient and go about business in a professional way. They found new markets and work through and with the "Artisan-Owned-Direct-Distribution-Model" that allows the Coop to sell their fashion Stone Mosaic Jewelry directly to retailers in the markets of the US.

ARTCAMP has not been a beneficiary of grants or charity and by standard the women of the coop are poor BUT contributed in many ways to the community in form of expansions of the local hospital, language learning and indigenous literature projects, water projects and more. By organizing more projects, without concerning oneself with the fact that one has no or little money, the projects and the desired goals take giant steps into becoming reality.