When Elsabet joined the Tintsaba workshop in Swaziland, it changed her life. “If I couldn’t work for Tintsaba, I think I would die,” she says.
The job has given her a dignity and independence that can’t be quantified. Elsabet’s co-worker Khetsiwe agrees. Without this job, Khetsiwe’s children wouldn’t be going to school. “We would just sit and do nothing,” she said.
Elsabet and Khetsiwe are just two of the skilled artisans working with Tintsaba, who have elevated the traditional craft of weaving sisal grass into an art form. They create jewelery from sisal, a common plant in Swaziland, and their jewelery routinely wins design awards.
You can buy the beautiful red pendant necklaces created by the women of Tintsaba in Global Handicrafts’ online shop, with more Tintsaba products available in-store!
Many of Vinh Hoa’s staff can’t do fine embroidery work in their homes. A lack of electricity means the dim lighting weakens their eyesight badly. After 2-3 years working in such conditions, Vinh Hoa staff told us, the women’s eyes can be so damaged that they can’t continue embroidering at all.
Azada was 14 years old when her father asked her to marry one of her cousins, hoping, as is common in some forms of Islam, that a husband who is a relative would treat her better than one who is a ‘stranger’.
It was a lonely, friendless existence until, at age 13, Cui Li discovered a group of people who were deaf like her. One new friend taught Cui Li sign language and how to read and write. It was an opportunity that suddenly opened the world to the teenager. She could now communicate, her relationships with her family improved and she began to meet more and more deaf people, including one young man who then became her husband!
