Gender Equality Madagascar Project #31478

Transform Lives in Madagascar with Silk and Raffia

by Conservation through Poverty Alleviation, Int

Transform Lives in Madagascar with Silk and Raffia

Project Report | Oct 2, 2018
New Ta'na'na line on display at the NY Now Show

By Kerry A O'Neill | Assistant Director

NY Now Show 2018

August 12-15^th

The NY NOW gift show in NYC is one of the biggest wholesale shows in the country. This year, with 20,000 buyers and over 2,000 exhibitors, the show offered an exciting opportunity for us, but also an ambitious deadline.

Our participation this year was a continuation of the Aid to Artisans program that we attended last summer at NY NOW. Mamy and Lalaina, program directors and lead artisans in Madagascar, attended the program last summer and received training, expert advice and feedback about our products and market preparedness. The team took their training to heart in preparation for this year’s show. In spite of an unexpected delay in our annual design workshop, the team kicked it into high gear, trained new artisans, secured cocoon sources and pulled it off. The box of our showcase materials arrived just one week before the show.

This year, as part of the Artisan Resource branch of the show, we built our own booth with design consultant Docey Lewis and spent the next four days showing off our best products and making new connections with customers. We used the show to launch our new Ta'na'na line of silks and raffias.

The show was a great success! In addition to generating new interest in our program and our brand, we made hundreds of new contacts and were able to take a number of sale orders right on the spot. The team in Madagascar has been busy with back to back orders ever since. A big thank you to our supporters and to the wonderful team at NY NOW.

The new orders are putting healthy pressure on our teams in both the US and Madagascar in order to take the business to the next level. Mamy and Lalaina are working with their first distributor partner this summer, Sanjo Silk, a company in Canada that will be importing our undyed papers. In addition, the team is training artisans in new techniques, mastering quality control and troubleshooting the task of managing a stream of orders while keeping one eye on the future. On the US side, we are following up with contacts, processing orders and streamlining our communication systems. It is definitely an exciting time!

Looking Forward:

If anyone is in the Washington state area, the Sheehan Gallery at Whitman College is hosting a beautiful exhibit on Madagascar all this fall, including work by CPALI, textile artwork and photo displays. The show will run from August 28th to December 7th. You can find more information here. We would love for you to stop by!

Dyed Cocoon Display

Raffia Wall Hangings

Links:

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Jun 25, 2018
Design Workshop Battles Rain to Produce Our Stunning Products Yet!

By KERRY O'NEILL | ASSISTANT DIRECTIOR

SILK SEWERS

here is a saying in Maroantsetra, "if you don't work in the rain, you won't get anything done". We are certainly learning the meaning of that sentiment this spring. As Madagascar emerges from a particularly active cyclone season and heads directly into the orographic (topography-induced) rainy season, the team can't seem to catch a dry day.

Despite the weather and a challenging political climate, however, we are proud to say that this spring has been one of the busiest and most productive to date. Following an ambitious set of silk orders during cyclone season, the team prepped for a series of visitors, each with a different set of skills to help our project grow.

The first was Safidy A.....?, a renouned Malagasy photo journalist who came to document the project and highlight the lives, culture, impact and struggle of the farmers and artisans working with our project. You can find a sampling of his beautiful, artistic prints below. We will post his full photo essay on our website soon.

Linda Cortright, founder and editor of Wild Fibers magazine also spent a few days with the project. During her stay, she interviewed team members and artisans about the project in preparation for a magazine article that she will write this year. Having worked all over the world with unique artisan groups, she brings a valuable perspective on how our project fits into the global market.

Finally, Docey Lewis, our design consultant and marketing advisor arrived to take the team to the next level and prepare products for the NY NOW gift show. The workshop ran for two weeks and produced tremendous results, reinvigorating the team with new skills and new momentum. It is something the whole team looks forward to every year and it is the single most valuable resource for learning new skills and refining our craft.

None of this would be possible without your support! Already this year, we were able to move into a new office, have our third project workshop with Docey Lewis, send orders to Canada, New York and Salt Lake City, and access new sources of cocoons and raffia.

THANK YOU!

SEPALI TEAM

Beautiful braids

raffia mat

Docey Lewis arrives to work with the team!

SAFIDY AT WORK

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Mar 29, 2018
Beating the Floods and Pushing Forward

By Kerry O'Neill | Assistant Director, CPALI

New Color Loom

The SEPALI team in Madagascar is starting the year off with a big hustle. The word is out about our silks and the orders are coming in back-to-back, creating welcome challenges with regard to scaling our project properly and keeping us on track to reach our goal of a sustainable business model. We’re not there yet, but consistent orders are certainly helping put the pressure on. The team is working to complete orders while sourcing silk from farmer cooperatives, growing the team appropriately, and actively combating the weather.

Battling Cyclone Season

Yes, cyclones are a season in Madagascar. Unfortunately this year has been more active than most. Ava made landfall in early January as a category 2 cyclone, Berguitta swept through in late January as a category 3, then a brief lull was followed by two in a row, category 3 Dumazile in early March and severe tropical storm Eliakim right on its heels. The relentless pummeling is starting to take its toll, but the team is taking the challenges as they come and trying to maintain a sense of normalcy and consistency. They are prioritizing tasks, adapting non-electric equipment during power outages, drying the silk in protected areas and continuing, miraculously, to ship boxes out on time. Best of all, the bridge that we repaired after last year's cyclone season still stands. Thank you donors!

Silk Expansion Packs

One recent marketing change that should help us weather the storms is the development and addition of 5 different species of wild silk to our collection. In addition to Ceranchia open and dense weave, we now feature Bombyx, Borocera, Argema, Antherina, and Deborrea. The new additions have already attracted positive feedback from our customers and we are now producing large repeat orders of paper, art pieces and material. Of course, that work involves expanding our farmer supply networks as well. The team is working on developing consistent, reliable networks for species of silk moths that require different host trees and different habitats. Good thing our director is an entomologist. Mamy has been rearing and studying these species for years and he's up for the task!

Looms and Raffia

Raffia continues to bolster our networks as well. The local raffia weavers make a high-quality, finely-woven raffia on traditional looms and women’s groups from the capital supplement our supply with their own version of wide, large raffia pieces with lots of surface area. We have been in partnership with these groups over the past couple of months to learn their techniques and adapt them to the local communities and products of Maroantsetra. The results are slow, but steady. Our team now has a number of looms that they are training local artisans on and creating beautiful, new designs that are uniquely ours.

Upcoming Workshop

One of the most exciting parts of the spring is preparing for our annual design workshop with Docey Lewis. She agreed to return to Madagascar this year to teach new designs, refine existing skills, and prepare the team and products for our trade show in August. Her training workshops are always extremely valuable to the team and they look forward to it every year. Not only does it get us organized and give us a big dose of confidence for the year, but it provides our team with a structured opportunity to learn the skills necessary for becoming an independent and sustainable Malagasy business. This is still a significant, but worthwhile investment for us and anything you can do to help is appreciated!

Thank you for all your support!

Artisan weaving on new SEPALI loom

Six Species of Wild Silk Papers

New Raffia Design

Cyclone floods new SEPALI property

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