Dhaka Handicrafts

Purpose

Aim: to uplift the socio-economic condition of distressed artisan families.

Their objectives are to:

• create fair income generating opportunities for socio-economically deprived artisan families
• make the families and producing groups self-reliant through earnings, savings and an awareness of self-help
• address gender issues and encourage women’s leadership
• enhance the artisans' skills through training
• introduce savings and local resource mobilisation schemes
• practice and promote producers’ welfare and family development, and the principles of ‘fair trade’.

Producers

Producer groups are co-operatives and each has a secretary, treasurer and president. The secretaries are key and keep records of payments and savings and control quality and often deliver the product to Dhaka. There are  groups located in different parts of Bangladesh, with eighteen groups around Bogra in the poorer area in the north, where Dhaka Handicrafts has a local office. There are around 1500 producer families involving something like 7500 beneficiaries. Women make grass, bawn and date palm products, while men mainly work with terracotta. Traditionally cane and pottery products are made by Hindus, indigenous people work in bamboo.

Dhaka Handicrafts would like to see men helping the women more with their work which includes responsibility for all domestic matters.  Capacity building funds have been used for training for both men and women. However, there have been real changes in the status of women, especially their ability to travel alone outside the village, and this is attributed to their earning power.

 

Benefits

Benefits for producers include:

• advance payments with orders for materials
• skills' training
• quality control
• the availability of a savings' scheme (BRAC or Grameen) as well as the DH scheme where 5% of payments are held and recorded in a passbook
• interest-free Dhaka Handicraft advance for long time for procurement of the raw materais
• health care with medical expenses met in serious ill health
• three months maternity pay
• awareness programmes for human rights
• community development
• a guaranteed safe working environment and flexible working hours
• Education support for daughters of producers to continue their education
• provision of goats to villages for income generation purposes.

Decision making involvement for the general group is encouraged. Children are allowed to help in production after school to aid their skill training (school is free to the 10th grade with the government providing free uniforms).

Women making grass products can earn a living income provided the family has some land, and some earn more than this.  There is no possibility of selling the baskets to local customers.   Basket weavers choose not to work full time because of their domestic duties, although there are some who would like to work more days. The group provides the artisans' rights to participate in pricing and product development.

Watch producer video here

Products