This is my first post blog post on WorldOfGood, so let’s hope it goes well.

Although I have lived in Ghana, West Africa for four years now and have interacted with the country, as well as the culture, just now am I beginning to truly understand things. This has to do with the fact that I just started working full time for Ayindisa, llc - Socially Responsible Artisan Handcraftsat the beginning of March, 2008; a business my brother founded in 2006 to help Artisans find more markets for their amazing work, contribute to bringing individuals out of poverty, promote fair trade bringing them better and more secure incomes, and to help satisfy our desire to make a difference.

My job entails online and offline marketing, however, these past few weeks as I am the only full time ex-patriot employee of Ayindisa in Ghana, I have been the point man concerning ordering, negotiating, and designing our new products we plan to release this summer.

I have also been helping to teach artisans about budgeting, communication, quality control, and their rights as individuals. This thus brings me to the new way of thinking I, and Ayindisa are trying to transfer into the mindsets of artisans. Although I have lived in Africa for four years, done humanitarian trips to villages where I was the first white person they have seen in Kenya, as well as other trips in Ethiopia and Ghana, I honestly do not believe I have ever been as moved as I am now to try to change and improve the lives of these incredibly hard working artisans.

I could never explain to someone who has never been here the true culture of a country such as Ghana; the bureaucracy, the corrupt government and thus the lack of labor law enforcement, the work ethic, and most pertinent - the way you must act to get things done around here. Undeterred however, I will explain to the best of my capabilities:

Ayindisa works with about 15 wood carvers whom make drums, masks, and nativity sets, amongst many other miscellaneous items. Peter Dramani (professionally called Dagando), our oldest artisan, long time friend, and soon to be 'point man' in Ghana now that I am moving back to the U.S., is in charge of all the wood-work related crafts we make. He is also a success story for development in Ghana and the many Less Economically Developed Countries (LED’s).

You must understand the mind set of the typical crafter is one where they will create a craft, do not necessarily ensure it is of the best quality they are capable of producing, and then plan on selling it to an individual they will never meet again – meaning they will hustle them and get as much money as they can. This is represented in Peter’s saying “sell today, feed yourself for a day.” These artisans think like this because very few have had the opportunities Ayidisa gives them where their work can be known under the same brand, giving people who view the carvings in America a contact to place orders for their very own carvings.

Thus, I hope you agree that I am doing well when I say Ayindisa is re-training artisans how to think and work in order to better their lives hence forth. We promote a work ethic where crafts are made that are all of equally high quality, then we perform a quality control screening ensuring this level is maintained, and finally we buy and sell these crafts at fair trade prices, selling them in America. We teach the artisans that by not overcharging, but rather doing multilaterally fair deals, then creating the crafts specified in the contracts and screening them for quality control before thinking they are finished with the job, that with ever item sold new orders will come from individuals that view previous orders, giving artisans insurance for the future, and converting them to a long term business ideology that helps them not to think in a short time mindset, further teaching them how to better provide and plan for themselves.

Unfortunately it has taken nearly 15 months to teach this mindset to Dagando. Now, we are helping him to re-teach this to all our workers of his artisan group. This is important because as is with a most recent order being processed by Ayindisa to carve 250 fourteen peice Mahogany nativity sets (or 3,800 distinct hand carved pieces) which are being reviewed for quality control needs right now, in 3 out of 4 of the sets, usually one piece will have a blemish such as an uneven base. This means having to have the workers re-work on an item they would already consider finished. This often would lead to them demanding payment for a finished job and they would usually get mad if we ask them to re-finish a set. This is brought on because they have never been introduced to a deal where their works quality will greatly increase the chances of individuals buying more crafts from them as I talked about above.

Thus, the end result of this new crafting ideology (which arguably is common in western and developed countries) yields more orders for the crafters products, and a more secure and profitable future for the artisans.

Ayindisa, llc has implanted this thinking into the minds of not only our woodcarving artisans, but as well have been teaching it to our basket, cloth, and bead making artisans. In a future post I plan to go much more in depth with this new theory, which is arguable old logic, yet I believe is being newly applied.

Until next time,

Kyle W. Gay
Director of Marketing, Ayindisa, LLC
Socially Responsible Artisan Handcrafts
e: Kyle@ayindia.com
w: www.ayindisa.com
b: ayindisallc.blogspot.com

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