When you visit Croix des Bouquets, the area of town known for Haitian metal art in the capital of Port-Au-Prince, you are met with a cacophony of tink, tink, tink as ball peen hammers strike sheets of steel. The sheets are cut from steel drums colored by oil and other liquids the drums at one time held. The process of turning sheets of metal into beautiful wall art is all done by hand, from cutting holes that become edges of trees and leaves, to accenting each lizard with a texture of scales, to painting or lacquering the final design. The artists are proud of their work, signing the pieces on the back side, leaving a raised, reversed signature on the front.
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NOBUNTO is a South African Fair Trade company that creates high quality hand-painted candles, ceramics and handcrafted greeting cards with the utmost attention to detail using mainly African inspired designs. Their mission is, in a region with high unemployment, to alleviate poverty, not only through development of industry but to be socially, ethically, and sustainably responsible.
Based in the small village Napier, about 180 km east of Cape Town, NOBUNTO has provided employment to mostly woman of the disadvantaged community and guarantees an income for over 18 families. The unemployment rate in the area is in the region of 50%. The word NOBUNTO comes from the Sotho language, meaning "For the people".
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Mira Fair Trade
Mira Fair Trade strives to promote social justice by working directly with underprivileged artisans by paying them fair wages to help them develop the knowledge to support themselves and their families. They are committed to empowering women and underprivileged communities, and moving towards a global Fair Trade lifestyle through the promotion of the Fair Trade Principles.
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Conserve
Born of a desire to reduce India's mountain of waste, improve energy efficiency, and help some of Delhi's poorest out of the city's slums, Conserve's upcycled sustainable bags in India achieves all this by turning plastic bags into high fashion.
Conserve started as a fledgling recycling project but quickly adapted to confront the biggest challenge it was facing – what to do with the thousands of plastic bags that could not be composted or recycled locally.
After much experimentation, the Conserve team hit upon the idea of not recycling, but upcycling by washing, drying, and pressing the bags into sheets. Handmade Recycled Plastic (HRP) was born and designs for handbags quickly came flooding in. The challenge was obvious: Use high fashion to support better lives for the poorest and a cleaner environment for all.
Today, Conserve India employs and trains hundreds of people from Delhi's most disadvantaged communities to clear their streets of the plague of plastic bag waste. Once the waste bags are turned into HRP products they are sold for profits which can be spent in those same communities on education and welfare programs.
By buying a Conserve product, you not only get to be a trend setter with a beautiful, funky piece of high fashion – you will also be helping some of India's poorest people, and its environment.
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Caribbean Craft
Founded in 1990 by a multinational group of young entrepreneurs, Caribbean Craft promotes employment in Haiti by training unskilled craftspeople, and by assisting the independent artisans through the introduction of new designs and new market outlets for painted Haitian metal art.
Caribbean Craft's specialty is the brightly colored, artistically hand-painted Haitian metal art wall hangings. These hand-painted Haitian metal art pieces are truly works of art. Wall art designs include painted metal geckos, painted metal dragonflies and painted metal frogs.
