A Social Entrepeneurship Project
To create labour opportunities for women in Ghana.
Ashanti – A Living Project
Project background and briefing:
During the spring in 2009 we traveled to west Africa to work as volunteers. While doing that we came close to a lot of poverty, and not surprisingly, one of the groups most exposed to it were unemployed women. To make a difference, being a volunteer, was much harder than we had first anticipated. From this stemmed the realisation that such voluntary contributions risk to face the problem of poverty from the wrong angle. A country like Ghana hardly needs a larger labour force, it needs job opportunities.
Because of this, we are now starting a project where clothes will be manufactured in Ghana, to be sold in the UK and Sweden. We hope that this project, in the long run, will create job opportunities that may give exposed women the possibility to an income independent of the benevolence of donates.
All surplus gained will return to the project. When a small scale business has become profitable, it will be time to realise the next step, which is to establish a company in Ghana that manufactures clothes with its own capital. Further ahead, we hope that the company will also function as a type of institute where women are given an opportunity to education and other support.
The project in detail:
The project in detail:
This project is composed by many parts. It primarily aims at improving the situation for exposed women in Ghana. In order to achieve this, it is important that the business, i.e. the manufacturing of clothes that are sold in the UK and Sweden, is profitable.
We will initiate the project by performing a pilot project on a small scale, in which we travel to Ghana and hire already existing tailors to produce clothes that have been designed for a sample collection. The collection will then be advertised and sold in the UK and Sweden. By doing this we hope to gain a better understanding of what style of clothing will be most efficient to produce and demanded by the market.
The style of clothing is subject to the outcome of the pilot project, but will be in line with current fashion trends to yield the highest possible demand. In order to differ from other brands, it will also feature elements of traditional Ashanti fabrics. The product shall target both ethically minded consumers, and the market in general.
During the pilot journey we will also establish links with people in the region, and gather information regarding such matters as conditions of employment, salaries, tariffs, prices of factors of production, premises etc.
When the first step has been realised, it will be time to establish a long term activity in Ghana. This means building/renting premises, investing in factors of production and hiring labour, i.e. the women. Apart from the production, the women will be given the opportunity to study, develop their skills as craftswomen and become part of a community. We also want to be able to offer a living for those who are homeless.
In order not to compete with already existing tailors in Ghana, no clothes will be manufactured for the domestic market. The aim of this project is not to strengthen the women at the cost of other workers in Ghana, but to hire them with resources generated in the west.
An important aspect of this project is that the conditions of employment and the working environment should reflect those in the UK and Sweden.
We will initiate this project in Ghana because it is a country which is politically stable and secure, whose inhabitants speak English, and because we already have links there. This does not mean that the activity in the long run needs to be tied to Ghana only – it is a dream to be able to expand this, and perform similar sister projects for other exposed groups in other poor countries.
Nina Falk
