TEMAK Crafts

Community Outreach

Empowerment

HIV/Aids

Holistic Ministry

Training for Skills

GOOD NEWS FOR CRAFTS LOVERS
By Godfrey Kimega
(POSTED: November 2004)

Collectors of contemporary Kenyan crafts can now view and purchase hundreds of hand-made products over the internet at a website launched by TEMAK.

Easily accessible to any computer on earth with an internet connection, the website is expected to expand the market for such common Kenyan crafts as Kiondo baskets, Maasai fabrics, bracelets, cotton kikoys and leather bags. The website's catalogue has photo displays of wooden masks from Kenyan tribes, soapstone carvings from Kisii and wall decorations from recycled tin sheets. Furniture from the water hyacinth plant growing on Lake Victoria is available at the site. Art lovers conversant with Kenyan-made artifacts will find familiar items including traditional baskets, gourds, canvas paintings, clay busts, traditional stools and much more.

The launch of the website, www.afrikapamoja.org, is an effort to improve the living standards of young women making artifacts in the town of Kisumu and its environs. Many of these young women dropped out of school due to lack of fees when their parents died of AIDS, a scourge that has battered this region of Kenya especially hard. Other girls are victims of cultural beliefs that encourage early marriage and deny them property rights. The situation for many of the girls becomes worse when they fall pregnant as a result of rape, early marriage or simply a lack of moral guidance. Making of crafts work by the disadvantaged young women forms part of a rehabilitation program undertaken by TEMAK.

Sales of crafts helps pay for computer training, tailoring and hairdressing courses that provides the girls with useful skills in life. TEMAK has been selling the craft items for several years now through personal relationships with local brokers and crafts shops overseas.

TEMAK crafts are sold in Europe and the United States under the Fair Trade umbrella, a growing movement in developed countries. The Fair Trade movement encourages consumers to buy from products which will contribute to the social development of poorer countries, rather than buying from profit-oriented multinationals.

For 4 months the work ranged from sketching, collecting photos of craft products and writing descriptions for each item. There were interviews with artisans from across Kisumu city to get the stories behind the crafts. Research on overseas prices had to be done to ensure TEMAK craft items were neither over priced nor undervalued. In October 2004, TEMAK Crafts e-commerce website was ready for the internet.

The over 120 individual web pages and close to 300 high resolution graphics had to be uploaded to the web server from a local computer. However, Kenya's unreliable internet connection made the exercise frustrating at times but progress was made. Within a week, the website was fully functional.

"Afrikapamoja.org is designed to resemble a supermarket, indeed that makes it a virtual store in cyber space," explains Godfrey Kimega, the website's designer. Once a visitor logs into the site and the home page opens, one could go straight to shopping through the crafts catalogue or find out about TEMAK's work in "About Afrikapamoja". At the crafts catalogue, the visitor can choose products through the alphabetical index or through the numerical product list. "Each of the products has a unique product code based on material, size and price. This will make it easier for buyers to communicate with TEMAK," says Kimega.

Apart from sorting through products alphabetically, visitors could simply click on the various categories on Afrikapamoja, and which are designed to resemble the departments on a supermarket floor. You could browse through baskets, bracelets, clothing, kitchen, office, interior decoration, greeting cards or the toys department.

Afrikapamoja.org is still a work in progress, says its designer, Mr Kimega. "When we got this job in April 2004, our focus was to put up an ecommerce website that's sustainable for TEMAK and friendly to its future customers. There isn't a lot of knowledge about e-commerce in Kenya and the success - or otherwise - of Afrikapamoja is going to be a valuable learning experience for all of us."

• What do TEMAK girls say?
• Notable events of 2004.
• Volunteers from all over

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