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ATNI supports Kala Raksha,
a grassroots trust working in Gujarat, India. Kala Raksha works to preserve
and promote traditional arts by assisting artisan cooperatives and women
embroiderers from six marginalized communities. The belief underpinning
this simple program is that women can achieve self-sufficiency by developing
their crafts, managing their small businesses, and making intelligent
decisions about how to use the income they generate.
The program is working. Women are putting money in the bank for reconstructing
and expanding homes. They've paid off loans, avoided further loans, bought
better quality clothes, purchased carpets to sit on, purchased fodder
for the herds, planted their fields, sent their boys to private school
in the city, bought dry goods in quantity to save time in shopping, and
took medicine regularly, rather than sporadically. These women have avoided
additional loans, purchased goats, cows, buffalo, camels, and camel carts
in order to "revolve" their funds, and they've paid for relatives'
medical expenses.
Kala Raksha itself has realized increased capacity with
the help of the series of workshops sponsored by CARE. Three product design
workshops with professional designers have been conducted, a workshop
on production efficiency has been held, and Kala Raksha recently began
a three-month course in tailoring for novices and its own tailor team.
CARE has supported also a trip to the US to participate in the San Francisco
International Gift show, which resulted in several new orders for Kala
Raksha. Kala Raksha is now working to find a long-term solution to the
sustainability of art and craft. Two problems operate simultaneously for
artisans. One, how to earn a fair living in an industrialized economy
by doing handwork, and two, how to nurture the creative spirit of traditional
art in the face of commercialization. Kala Raksha is beginning to answer
this dilemma with its most recent projects, the Learning for Earning basic
education program, and Kala Raksha Vidyalaya, the Design School for Artisans.
Learning for Earning is a customized educational program in which artisans
teach one another very useful topics such as basic business skills,the
teaching artisans to computer-aided design. A far more ambitious project,
Kala Raksha Vidayalaya, is envisioned as a self-sustaining school for
design, where education will be fee based.
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