Projects
Project Pokhara
The process of constructing the girls school familiarized the M4M team with the community in Pokhara, which subsequently allowed us to analyze the political, social, and economic climate of the region. After establishing this baseline, M4M examined the hyperlocal market and deduced which specialized skills could most productively meet the demands of the local economy. In Pokhara, Nepal, this skill was weaving/sewing and dyeing fabrics.
With this information in mind, Saika and the team reached out to local shopkeepers, inquiring about their fabric needs. A majority of these shopkeepers responded with high demand for purses, pashminas, and backpacks. After establishing these relationships, M4M located and hired a local trainer who proceeded to teach the women in the Mothers’ Group how to produce the fabric for these popular products.
Interested mothers then spent 3-4 months in training to master these skills. After they reached mastery level of these skills, they had to fulfill the pay it forward tenet of the program. Each mother nominated another mother in the community that they felt would be successful within the program. After 2 years, we have taught over 15 mothers and the project is now self sustaining. There is no longer oversight on our part as the community has taken the project under its wing. The success of the project has also created a number of jobs within the community from trainers to babysitters for the children as the mothers are working.
Project Cape Town
M4M made its first visit to Cape Town in August 2017 to begin ground research for the next Mothers’ Group. The principal goal was to establish vendor relationships and meet interested mothers in and around Cape Town.
We began by visiting the shops at the Waterfront and storefronts around the Peninsula, along with roadside shops run by individual artisans, to determine what goods and services are most in demand in the Cape Town economy. After witnessing an overwhelming predominance of beaded materials, we determined that beading and creating jewelry holds significant potential for female empowerment through participation in local markets.
With this in mind, we started talking to vendors and locals alike, trying to identify a community that could possibly benefit from the implementation of a micro-loans program. Our inquiries led us to Imizamo Yethu, a township in Houts Bay with a population of nearly 30,000 individuals, sixty percent of whom are unemployed.
After spending three days in Imizamo Yethu, we have established three strong local contacts. Each are mothers who are active in their communities and enthusiastic about the prospect of a project designed to increase cash flow in the local economy. We have also spoken with a talented local artisan who specializes in creating beaded jewelry, and she has agreed to train other women in this skill.
Finally, we are currently in contact with several vendors in the United States, including Tory Burch and Procter & Gamble, and several others in Cape Town, including Beloved Beadwork, in the hopes of establishing a partnership between these companies and the prospective Mothers’ Group in Imizamo Yethu. We are also considering the idea of setting up an Etsy shop online to display their products.