Fair Trade from Undugu, Kenya

Undugu or 'brotherhood' raise funds for street children, their families and other marginalised people in Nairobi by selling beautiful carved and painted soapstone bowls and jewellery boxes.

The revenue from this also helps with education and training and this provides skills for young people and their families and rehabilitates them or helps prevent them starting on a life on the street.

Soapstone comes from the famous Kisii district and the patterns are carved with great skill by the craftsmen.

Barb's trip to Undugu, September 2008

The journey to Nairobi from Heathrow is around eight hours and, as we were delayed by an hour, it was already morning when I eventually got through immigration. Fred Masinde, General Manager of Undugu, was waiting for me as I came out and I was really happy to see his infectious grin. We drove to the Ivrea Sisters' hostel, where I was staying, which is run by Catholic nuns, and Fred and I easily fell into conversation about things fair trade and life in general in Kenya.

Undugu is one of the oldest fair trade groups in Africa. It was established in 1973 by the late Father Arnold Grol, a Dutch Catholic priest belonging to the Missionaries of Africa after he saw the numbers of street children rise. Father Grol wanted the children to feel a sense of comradeship with each other and so founded a youth club. At that time there were 100,000 kids out of school in slum areas. Undugu still helps street children (and their families, if they have any), out of dire poverty, and back into education or skills training, depending on their age. Undugu works with many artisan groups in different parts of Kenya, selling their products both locally and internationally. Through some of the social premium payments this creates, Undugu manages to fund schemes in three main regions: Nairobi, Kisii and Mombasa. They have classes in practical subjects such as motor mechanics and electrical mechanics as well as running classes in self worth and how to cut drug dependency. Many street children have drug addiction problems.

On Monday morning we decided to visit some of the jewellery producers. Turning off the main road in Dandora, a Nairobi suburb, we followed a red earth track for a short distance and arrived at Rose's workshop. Made of wood and measuring roughly 12' x 10' it had two work benches with eight artisans at work. The artisans were very smartly dressed, which I thought a really nice touch, and looked happy in their work. Rose was the boss. She thought up the designs and colours, and paid the workers a good piece rate. It's impossible to guarantee continuous employment at the moment since the group rely on both tourist and export orders coming in. We looked at the magazines and examples I'd brought and agreed that lovethatstuff would fund a week's development time for Rose to see if she could come up with designs to suit white skin. We had a good laugh about how many more colours looked better on her skin than mine.

Early on Tuesday Fred and I left Nairobi and headed south east to meet the South Yatta Women's Group who produce kiondos. The road to Machakos was dusty and pitted. For long stretches it was like driving over cobblestones as there was lots of new road surfacing going on. We reached Katangi, some way outside Machakos, around 2pm and I was overjoyed to be in the countryside and see some flowers, trees and birds. It hadn't rained for several months but nevertheless it was beautiful. Patricia, who ran the South Yatta Women's Group was stylishly dressed in pink and white. We looked at lots of kiondos (natural fibre, handwoven handbags) in various shapes and sizes and, along with Monica, the designer, mused over different combinations of colours and types of leather handles etc. Between the three of us we narrowed down three bright colours and four muted colours. I paid for the women to produce samples and for the delivery to Undugu. As with all the producers I've met, I really liked Patricia - a strong, inspiring woman with a gentle, yet confident manner. The women need the income from the baskets as although many producers will have some access to land to grow staples, they need some cash as well and, with the paucity of rain, food supplies can be worryingly low.

One of Undugu's longest established product lines is soapstone carving. So, early on the fourth day Fred, Norah and I went by bus to Kisii and on to Tabaka. Soapstone supports a whole town. To start with, the quarry provides jobs for extracting, sawing and shaping the stone to the necessary sizes. Then in the town of Tabaka itself and its outskirts, artisans of varying skills levels create a good range of products: chess sets, key ring fobs, paperweights, boxes, figures, animals and jewellery. I met and talked to many artisans.

Daniel, the production manager from one of the co-operatives, had been a teacher and decided to see if he could practically support some artisans in his home area near Kisii. They started in 2002 with just 300,000 Kenyan shillings (around $430) and the cooperative now employs more than a hundred men and women. Their shop is well placed on the main highway from the Masai Mara to Tanzania so quite a few tourists visit and this helps the group sell carvings in reasonable quantities. The workers all own a share in the business and where they can, with their profits, diversify into other areas. Two people have bought land. One man bought cows and now sells milk, and a woman raises chickens to sell - she has built a house and now has 300 hens. Upskilling and diversifying in this way generally helps the local economy.

I visited James Nyandieka in his house where his family are making soapstone pendants for lovethatstuff. James is managing to also provide work to 30 women and 15 men and the income the get supports their families' education, food and healthcare. All of the children go to primary school, all go to secondary school and some go to university. As I had brought some plain heart pendants back that weren't selling here very well, James and his family managed to experiment with colours and designs. It was wonderful to watch them at work, see the results and decide which were the strongest right there on the spot. We had a soda and I felt really comfortable in their small house chatting to them and taking photos of the whole family.

The village of Tabaka was lined with workshops on both sides of the street. Women as well as men carve soapstone and Mary Ombuy was very talented at fine work for chess sets. Moffat Aboya had lovely key fobs, Yodom Siangu lovely miniature figures. The broad sweeping background of green hills, with huge trees dotted across neat fields showed this to be a fertile area but one with an increasing population density and resultant claims to land. Farms were small and so couldn't support people fully - they needed a cash income as well.

The sun was going down when we left Tabaka and we had spent the whole day meeting different artisans yet there was still another to see before we left. Evans Some was making very cute paperweights which should be in transit here soon. We spoke briefly to some of the master carvers and goggle eyed with the cornucopia of goods, we went back to Kisii for the night.

Undugu are doing a great job against very challenging odds and it was wonderful to see so many artisans not only supporting themselves and their families but contributing to great programmes for street children with the extra social premium they get from fair trade. Well if that doesn't make you feel good, I don't know what will! Enjoy buying products from the deeply lovely Undugu.

Barb's trip to Bombolulu