Kaarvan Crafts Foundation (KCF) is a Lahore-based non-profit organization that works to mobilize rural women with vocational skills and link them to markets.
The word empowerment has been buzzing for the last decade. It’s been used to sell everything from deodorant to washing machines; it’s been overused and abused. Having once been appropriated by marketing departments of big conglomerates, the word lost its meaning and essence.
However, there are still organizations working towards fulfilling the inherent promise of the word.
Kaarvan Crafts Foundation (KCF), based out of Lahore, is a non-profit organization that works to mobilize rural women with vocational skills and link them to markets. The organization works with craft clusters lead by women across the country. They help them structure their informal home-based businesses into an entrepreneurial venture with links to both the physical and the digital market space.
They work across 15 distinct districts and have so far helped more than 25,000 women in over a 1000 villages in the country.
They recently hosted their first exhibition of the new decade at the Emporium Mall, featuring traditional crafts from Multan, Bahawalpur, Abbottabad and Haripur.
The three-day long event was set up to resemble an expo exhibition, giving the women more space to show their wares and to enable better consumer engagement. From hand-worked and embroidered fabric to embellished home linen, beaded purses and evening bags, shawls and select stitched garments, the exhibition championed indigenous style. Despite rain and cricket matches choking the city traffic, the response to the exhibition was a testament to its resounding success.
Speaking to Mashal Khan, Head of Strategy at KCF, revealed that the organization doesn’t just help them with exhibitions. They also equip them with business understanding and link them to bigger brands and buyers. “Our team identifies marginalized women from economically challenged communities. We work with them for a year to help them grow and sustain themselves even without our support in the future. We teach them basic skills, help connect them to brands like Generation and Urban Outfitters, and others who then build their own working relationships with the women and continue their partnerships,” she explains.
Khan also adds, “The exhibition this time was extremely well received with women taking home sizeable profits, ranging between approximately Rs.100,000 to Rs. 200,000. They also built links with local customers, sharing their business cards and numbers and taking order(s) for certain designs and styles. 15 of the women who participated in the exhibition this time are also utilizing the digital space through our collaboration with Aangan - a web platform - and Samsung.”
“We’ve created a digital courtyard where they can upload their crafts and the rest works like a regular retail website. There are currently 80 women who are selling their products online.”
For the women who have been digitally enabled, KCF also provided digital literacy training, helping them learn the online language, parameters and teaching them how to photograph their wares as well as upload them. This initiation enables the women to be in charge of their own e-space and sell to a much larger global audience, truly embodying the essence of empowerment.
KCF hosts their exhibitions quarterly, with the next one slated for April, featuring a different craft clusters from different districts next time. This rotating system gives women not only a chance to produce a volume of work they can sell to the market but also ensures that the buyer has something new to look forward to each time.
Since the organization has partnered up with Emporium Mall, the exhibits can be considered regular feature for the year.
What would be heartening to see is if the mainstream fashion industry embraces these craft clusters and bring them to the fore in contemporary manner.
While the efforts of KCF in improving the economic and business capabilities have been irreplaceable, the fashion fraternity should step up and embrace our indigenous ethos and really use it to propel Pakistani fashion into the global sphere. If Stella Jean, a Haitian-Italian designer can be a torch-bearer for Chitrali craftsmanship at Milan Fashion Week, why can’t we have more local designers working with these women to create an entirely new style of embellishment, embroidery to truly showcase what our country can offer?
