Transcript
With Project Três, we work developing skills in women in these vulnerable conditions. Our work happens in India and in Kenya. And I decided to do this because I come from the fashion industry. I’ve worked as a fashion designer for over six years in my home country, Brazil. I decided to make use of these skills I had to actually give the power to women which didn’t have access to the same education as I had, as a tool to help them to take care of their own lives. Everything is very experimental, that’s why we keep the name project in our name. Initially we teach these women these handcraft skills, how to make accessories how to teach, how to sew, how to check the quality, and as they become more skilled and as they learn how to make more and more products, their confidence also grows and they can start looking for other jobs and other opportunities and even become leaders inside the project. So we have a few cases of women that join without knowing any sort of skills working before, like fetching water or washing dishes or washing clothes. And now they are the team leaders of the project in their own countries. We also help women coming from domestic violence, any sort of abuse or the ones that need support with divorce, or support paying the school fees. So we do everything through the project by selling the products we produce with these women which are all fair trade. And by receiving donations.
I decided to combine these skills from the fashion industry with the fact that I suffered domestic violence. So when I used to be a child, my father, he was very abusive and I saw my mom struggling a lot in our house to raise me and my brother and to overcome the situation. And I saw how hard it is for women, especially when they have kids to live in this kind of situations. And for very long, I suffered a lot with my own life and with my own situation until I decided to use these as also an asset and a skill to help others to step out of these situations. The way how I started Project Três right after I finished my job in Brazil after six years as a fashion designer. I decided to spend a season in California where I was thinking about my life and that sounds really cliche and I was practicing yoga and working on a cafe, like saving money and thinking what I wanted to do with my future.
When I decided to do the idea of project tres. So I had this idea, I wanted to start making necklaces out of recycled wood and that I would like to help women. And I chose India because I wasn’t ever there, I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know absolutely anyone there. And I knew at that point that if I went back to Brazil, my home country, especially because I already had a very stable career before I left, people would offer me jobs and most likely I would accept. My mindset was just like I want to go as far away as I can right now to see if I can actually do that or if I’m just a crazy person. And actually everything worked out. And of course I had lots of challenges along the way. It’s been four years since the beginning of project tres and we are just at the beginning.
The women working behind them, first of all, they know the price for how much we sell our final products and they are paid a fair wage. Usually in the fashion industry, when we are talking about fashion garments, it is estimated that fast fashion pays 0.6% to the person actually making that garment. And inside the project Tres at the moment we pay 20% of the final price to the artisan. Besides that, they learn the whole process so they can really make the whole product and they also self organize the groups and the production in a way that they don’t stop and that everything is continuously working. It’s also very important for, for fair trade to take the responsibility for the materials you use. So when we started Project Três, we were just making sure the women directly working were being paid fair wages. And the way how we reinvest the money is in supporting them for their personal development. So if they need therapy, if they need driving classes, they need school fees for the kids or healthcare, we cover this from our profit. But we couldn’t afford to buy materials that were fair trade because they are, most of the time are expensive. So since the middle of 2019, we shifted into fair trade materials. So everything we use in Projects Três, are either a leftover materials from the local market where our projects are happening or we buy from fair trade of suppliers as well.
First we understand that if they are not financially independent, there is no possibility for independence. So this is the first step we tackle. I used to say that we sit to talk with them about life and understand where are their problems. And in the meantime we make products that are the result of this. So the whole goal was never to simply make these products but to help them open up about the issues they are facing during the time they are making this product. So we help them to overcome violence in their houses, to learn new skills, to learn new tasks, to occupy different roles in society and inside the project. So for example, Mooska, she’s one of the women in our project. She started as someone doing crochet and now she’s the person handling all the finances we do in India. So she was completely trained inside the project and she learned all the systems and everything and now she’s the one taking care of our finances. When it comes into culture, definitely we have to adapt and it’s never that we impose something in these women or we say this is the way for empowerment and you have to act X, Y, Z. We always try to listen to them and see in which phase of their lives they are and what they actually need. And we see how we can contribute to that. In some cases we have women that they are still suffering domestic violence for example. And they are still in the process of understanding and stepping out of these and becoming empowered and come from the situation. But our paper in this position is that we really respect them and we wait for them to have this feeling that it is really their time to talk about what they want and what they don’t.
By starting their own businesses, we have a few women in the project who did that already by proposing new programs and new products that we make inside the project. So lately we have been doing cooking classes in India and the current situation, we had to stop all the classes and everything, but this was a program that was working very successfully. We were promoting on TripAdvisor and Airbnb and this is something that was completely developed by one of the ladies in the project. Another way is that they can become a full time employed by the project and every year we make interviews to understand which one of them would like to become full time employed. Actually most of them they would like to get a full time employment in Project Tres. But up to now we are not able to financially sustain all of them as full time workers. So we just pay them for production. They can also work for other organizations or companies and we always support them in the process of telling the person hiring them how much they wanna earn, like what are the days that they need off and everything like that.
They’re already the present of entrepreneurship, especially in the moment like now, we see that the world is really not being able to cope with the practices we are doing so far. So when we are just thinking about the money and capitalism and exponential growth, this is really not possible. This is really something that it’s broken though and it will keep on breaking. I believe it is not an easy choice for sure. And maybe not all the companies are going to be able to completely shift into a sustainable and social entrepreneurship model. But I believe that every niche brand and organization and company that doesn’t really start taking social responsibility from now on, I think they are not going to be able to survive.
