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EmboCraft (South Africa)

 One of our collaborators in South Africa is EmboCraft, an education, training and rural development NGO in South Africa. WILD and Embocraft have collaborated on two successful programs to train poor rural people - mostly black women - in environmental awareness, while producing revenue-earning crafts. The trainings usually involve craft instruction for the women (dying, stitching, etc) and some very basic business skills, combined with a workshop in which the women - especially the "gogos" or grandmothers -- tell environmental stories. The stories are then the basis for production of painted or stitched squares that eventually end up as parts of a quilted wall hanging - an item for sale.

CONSERVATION, COMMUNITY AND CRAFTWORK

Early in 2001, the President of the WILD Foundation, Vance Martin, requested Embocraft Training Trust to set up projects to emphasize the meaning of Wilderness and Heritage sites in Africa, across cultures, perspectives and poverty. We had previously been successful with a number of Craftaid projects in Black rural communities and so we agreed.

The complex issues inherent in rural development have always to be taken into account before any project, no matter what it is, can succeed. For the aims of Embocraft to become concrete outcomes, we must deal with all the underlying realities that exist in rural communities. Taking these specific conditions into account we focus on the following principles: training in basic craft skills, story telling, the making of a story quilt, and teaching very basic business skills.

The resultant programme involves upliftment incentives based on teaching income generating skills, plus a story-telling workshop.

Our target groups are mainly rural women where the very high incidence of unemployment and poverty perpetuates the cycle of abuse of women. Many women live in fear as they do not trust their partners and have no rights to question or deny. Giving the women the ability to earn an income strengthens their financial independence and if they are thrown out of the home they have some ability to fend for themselves and their children.
Giving them self-esteem, peer group support and awareness of various potential life threatening issues is a small boost towards independence and their ability to claim their human rights. Many women have formed self-help groups as a result of our projects. These groups have continued to operate. We are currently working to get their groups to form co-operatives that will give them access to various forms of financial assistance and other training.

Goals of CRAFTAID

The goals of CRAFTAID is to deal with taboo and other unconsidered issues and through skills training to support communities undergoing the devastating effects of disease and poverty.

Objectives:

To raise awareness of the complex issues resulting in the AIDS pandemic and the destruction of the environment

To provide healing and learning using craft skills and workshop techniques in the making of story quilts

To provide life skills training to promote upliftment of disadvantaged people in rural areas

To reinforce the efforts of both men and women to take responsibility for the problems they identify and wish to address

To utilise group work and peer learning to maximise training

To provide the means of economic empowerment through skills training that results in saleable products

To teach the basic tenets of small business to support these income generating opportunities.

To ensure sustainability of the outcomes of the course through networking with established groups able to provide mentors and assistance both with the participants and with the marketing of products

To develop Craftaid courses and register all courses within the South African National Qualifications framework

Summary of the CRAFTAID Course

Outline of craft skills taught over five days:

Textile Dyeing - sun dyeing and tie-dyeing
Textile Printing - block printing using potatoes and polystyrene
Embroidery - basic stitches
Resist printing - using flour and water or mealie (maize) meal
Story squares - pictures drawn, painted and embroidered, using techniques learned (i.e. story telling using the medium of craft).

Opportunities: Income generation, Entrepreneurship development, Networking with Community Development Fora and other organisations

Our Craftaid courses are followed by a three-day basic business course, provided that funds are available. Entitled "Manage Your Own Small Business" and developed by the Democracy Development Programme, it focuses on very basic accounting principles such as costing of raw materials, mark up and profit principles, budgeting and how to use a calculator. The course is highly interactive and a manual in the form of a workbook and stationery used for the course are left with the participants for future use.

For The WILD Foundation project we intended to use methods similar to those mentioned above, employed by the successful Craftaid programme. This would help empower communities to take a step forward out of their extreme poverty by training them to produce acceptable craft items such as wall hangings and cushion covers.

Environmental Story-Telling

Seventeen communities were included in this project, two funded by the Democracy Development programme and the balance by The WILD Foundation. British Petroleum provided start up capital for materials and equipment when the course has been completed, in order that communities can continue developing their skills by producing saleable stock until they begin to receive income from their sales. B.P. also provided funding to enable us to get the project off the ground in the Eastern Cape and in the Free State.

Since our emphasis was on a broad range of conservation issues, it was necessary for us to first run the basic Craftaid Programme, funded by Care Deutschland, in most of the selected communities where special environmental issues were at stake. Following that, we were able to do the environmental story telling workshops to bring out the themes we wanted them to express through the craft skills just learned.

Training Phase I

South Africa's rural and peri-urban squatter communities, in particular, are trapped in a cycle of poverty and we discovered very little spiritual association with wilderness. The thought of the need to preserve the, often very beautiful, environment where they live, had not occurred to communities who had been given no environmental education. Several communities had had the benefit of workshops with environmental and conservation officers, prior to our story telling workshops. These showed much more awareness of their surroundings as possible income generators through properly managed tourism. Some were already working on ideas and plans to attract tourists and their potential income generation to their surroundings.

There were noticeable differences in attitudes to environmental issues where prior education had been given. Our trainers believe that significant impact would be made on rural communities if they were able to participate in a wilderness "trail", or trek, before attending our workshop. In the future, such trails may be provided by the S. A. Wilderness Therapy Institute. We believe that these trails will impact usefully on participants with regard to their creativity since their minds will already be open to many previously unseen - or rather, unobserved - wonders of the environment when they first come into contact with the new creative materials (paints, pigments, dyes etc) and are asked to express their ideas.
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Community response to the project:

Very positive feedback came from all the communities that participated in these workshops. Most of the responses from the evaluation exercise at the end of the workshop were similar, and I quote a few of these from the reports:

"We enjoyed everything - the games, the dancing and singing, the painting, the embroidery, learning about the embroidery, the patient teaching by the craft facilitators, the appreciation of their traditional attire, cookery, homes and the way the trainers told them about their own families."

"We learned more about each other, the environment, our mountains (parrots, fish traps etc) and what these meant to visitors and tourists and we learned how to take care of our own area - the trees (rivers, paintings, turtles etc.)"

"We want to teach our children and others about what we have learned and organise meetings with our leaders to tell them what we have discovered and become aware of and to urge our leaders to appoint guards for the environment."

Outcome:

In viewing the beautiful hangings produced, it should be borne in mind that none of the communities we worked with had any previous knowledge of the techniques we taught since they had not learned art and craft at their schools. Most of the people we worked with had very limited education and were barely literate in Zulu. Their stories were written for them by our Zulu trainer and then translated into English for the benefit of those who would purchase the hangings. Many of the stories express the feelings of alienation older members of communities feel from the young who appear to be lacking in discipline. Many of the members of all the communities found it difficult to listen to the others speak and insisted on carrying on side conversations. This situation required some handling by the trainers so that the speakers could be heard. It also seemed difficult for many of them to listen carefully to instruction given by our trainers, indicating that they were unused to participating in workshops. As the workshops progressed this situation generally improved somewhat.

Our trainers have found the workshops satisfying and feel that the education and training they have been able to offer is worthwhile.

The first phase of this project was so successful that Phase 2 involved workshops, stories and production of wall hanging quilts that were part of an exhibition – and for sale - - at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2003.