Tanzanian Women Handcrafting Their Way to Financial Independence Through Finnish Fairtrade
Three women excited about the prospect of becoming businesswomen after having received a business training at the Kimbilio women’s shelter in Morogoro, Tanzania. Katja Kokkoniemi, founder of SideBySide, developed the training to empower women out of poverty through business. Photo: Eevi Konttinen
SideBySide is a fairtrade interior design company started in 2016, which Ambitious Africa is partnering with. The business has so far employed five hundred women in Tanzania, in rural communities as well as in a women’s shelter. The women make interior items such as handweaved baskets, which are sold to Finnish resellers. They can use their earnings to move beyond household duties and imagine new possibilities for themselves and their families.
When Katja Kokkoniemi started her interior design brand, all she knew was it must be colourful and stick out from other minimalistic Finnish brands. Whilst browsing around a design market, a stall with brightly coloured textiles captured her eye. As she approached the stall she was warmly greeted by a woman from Ghana. She became Katja’s first business connection to Africa as she began selling her textiles to Katja. Katja’s mother, who was helping her in the beginning to sow the textiles into cushions and bed blankets, suggested that she employ African women to do the handcrafting. In 2016, Katja hopped on her first flight to Tanzania.
Employing women to handcraft fairtrade products in rural towns
Katja went to Tanzania because a Finnish woman named Katri Niiranen-Kilasi had agreed to introduce her to a group of women in the town of Momella. When Katja told the women she would pay a fair amount if they used their handcrafting skills to make products out of the materials she provided, it was the first time for most of them receiving a business offer of any kind. For many of them, the majority of their daily life is spent doing essential household work.
In February 2016, Katja placed the first order from the women to handcraft fifty interior cushions and thirty bed blankets with the materials Katja had purchased. When she returned in April, around thirty women showed her what they had made.
“I got goosebumps when I saw them holding up the handcrafted items with big smiles. They were so happy when they realised, they can make money from their skills” - Katja Kokkoniemi
An elder showing younger women how to use bulrush, large wetland grass-like plants, to weave baskets at SideBySide’s week-long training, which took place in the Kimbilio women’s shelter in Morogoro in 2018. Photo: Eevi Konttinen
She bought more materials, made regular visits and provided schooling to develop their business skills. As the word spread, more women (and men) came to ask how they could get involved. Forty more women from a town called Nkoarangan joined. When she came to the towns, she didn’t tell the men exactly what I was doing there at first.
- They probably thought I was on holiday, she says.
When the project got some media attention last August the men started to catch on and since then they’ve wanted to do business with Katja. She tells the men that the women always come first.
Women from the Nkoarangan community together with Katja Kokkoniemi, ready for the SideBySide business training in 2016.
At the time, Katja felt her personal interior brand could no longer hold the big changes the small company was undergoing, so she established the SideBySide concept, which could impact more women. SideBySide is rooted in the idea of supporting people in developing countries in a way that gives the people themselves the possibility to push their home countries from developing to emerging.
“Fairtrade is about facilitating meaningful cultural exchanges where everyone is treated as equals along the way. When these values are applied to a business, a consumer or company can buy its products with a good conscience”- Katja Kokkoniemi
Women being taught by elders in Morogoro how to weave interior items using material from the bulrush plant, 2018. Photo: Eevi Konttinen.
A woman’s day made easier in an eco-village
The women usually do the handicrafting work from home. A woman typically gets up at four in the morning to handcraft for a couple hours before tending to her children. During the day she spends several hours collecting brushwood twenty kilometres away for preparing food for the family. In the evening, she has a couple more hours to continue the handcrafting which will bring in her income.
According to Katja, there are many pieces to be put together before women in these communities can earn a decent living. When they have nutritious food that they don’t have to spend the whole day preparing, they have more energy to absorb what they learn through the SideBySide business schooling, she says.
Together with partners, SideBySide plans to build an eco-village where essential vicinities, such as a daycare, would be built close to the homes so mothers can spend more time handcrafting and creating financial stability for the household. SideBySide is working with Finnish solar energy company Afstor, based in Lappeenranta, to provide stoves for the eco-village homes. The stoves would create a more efficient way of cooking and spare the women from having to make the long treks to collect brushwood every day.
Women’s shelter in Morogoro joins SideBySide
In July 2016, Katja moved her business in Finland from Nivala to Lempäälä to be closer to potential partners and expand her team. In Lempäälä, she met with members from a local church in the process of building a women’s shelter in Tanzania, in Morogoro. They agreed Katja could introduce the women to SideBySide once it was built.
The women’s shelter in Morogoro, called Kimbilio, is today a place women who have suffered from abuse can turn to. Many have run away from genital mutilation, others from abusive husbands. In some cases, young women have ran away from their families because their fathers raped them and they found out they were pregnant.
Forty women from the shelter joined SideBySide in 2019. Katja appointed a woman named Ruth Mmari as the local executive director of SideBySide at the Kimbilio shelter. Each bishop within the Roman Catholic Church in Tanzania are administered a different territory, called dioceses. Ruth has previously worked as the director for women in diocese of Morogoro.
“The first time the women come to the Kimbilio shelter they don’t have smiles on their faces. They come here with nothing. We give them toothbrushes, clothing, food and love. They are very happy after two weeks” - Ruth Mmari
A woman swirling around with a basket she made at the Kimbilio shelter in 2018. Photo: Eevi Konttinen.
Women carrying baskets they made at the Kimbilio shelter in 2018. Photo: Eevi Konttinen
The Kimbilio shelter offers a supportive community with women who have gone through similar experiences. At the shelter, Katja’s orders go through Ruth. The first order was a collection of eight hundred products consisting of baskets, mats, lights and bags. Katja doesn’t tell the women exactly how to make the items. She wants them to handcraft in their unique way with the skills and techniques they would normally use. Ruth, on the other hand, works more closely in overseeing the quality of their work.
Children playing in the water next to bulrush plants, which many SideBySide products are made of. Photo: Katja Kokkoniemi
When the batch of eight hundred products arrived in Finland in January 2019, they were divided into packages and sent to the partnering Finnish schools, churches and companies. The partners know that when buying products through SideBySide, many of the women back in Tanzania are investing the money towards an education for themselves or their children. The partners get training from SideBySide on how to market the products responsibly, so that the stories of the Tanzanian women who made them are carried on to the Finnish consumer.
“Most Finns don’t blink twice when spending forty-euros, which is the price of a handcrafted basket. In Tanzania, that’s almost a fifth of an annual university fee” - Katja Kokkoniemi
The women who were the first to take part in the SideBySide project, at a sowing centre in Momella where mothers often bring their children. The photo was taken during Katja Kokkoniemi’s first trip to Tanzania in 2016. Photo: Katja Kokkoniemi.