ALBA Collectives of Finland joins SEWA to promote HANSIBA

Self-Employed Women's Association based in Ahmedabad and Alba Collective, a global circle of prominent professional women have teamed up to launch the traditional craft work of Gujarat's rural women, in the world of high fashion.

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'Fashion Human Rights’ is all set to give a jet start to the craft work of the women artisans of Banskantha district in Gujarat in the international market. This project to launch the the traditional craft work of Gujarat's rural women, in the world of high fashion is in Collaboration of Alba Collective Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), a women's trade union based in Ahmedabad .

The Alba Collective is a Finland based organisation that aims to promote the autonomy and financial stability of poor women craft workers around the world. They have been working along with SEWA in India. Alba is working to persuade fashion houses and established designers to work with rural women artisans so that they can fetch higher returns for their work.

A two day long workshop at Radhanpur was attended by 10 Alba members from Finland and around 70 women artisans from Banaskantha district. These artisans aged from mid twenties till the nineties. These participants exchanged their skills and understanding of the global fashion market. The objective of the workshop was to familiarise the women artisans with ideas from the world of high fashion, and train them in incorporating those ideas into their own craft work.

The rural artisans with different classic types of craft work or traditional embroidery were taught about quality, design and colour combinations popular in the international fashion market. Alba Collective would come up with a 'swatch book' to preserve and show case the exquisite craft work.

Creative Design and Business Development Consultant of Alba come here to understand the strengths of these women artisans and to educate them about the trends and colours of the fashion market. These artisans get trained in their family through hands on work. Most of them have never gone to school. Alba is building various business models to cater innovative design engagement in the social sector, involving design houses and web–based marketing tools in the luxury goods industry to promote the products in affluent classes.

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