Featured Action: Alleviate Poverty in Marginalized and Rural Groups Through Fair Trade

Browsing through the Fair Trade actions on the site, I came across an action set up by Devan Singram to alleviate poverty in marginalized and rural groups through Fair Trade.

In the next 6 months, I pledge to connect with at least 125 artisans who live below the poverty line and raise their average monthly income!

Devan is doing this through an innovative project called Elevyn, which is directly connecting socially conscious buyers to crafts produced by indigenous, rural and marginalized urban communities, in a Fair Trade way. The innovation is that Elevyn is connecting marginalized communities to the worldwide market through technology and the internet.

We do that by building a web-based platform that connects community-based sellers to a socially-conscious market. These online stores can be set up and managed by the communities themselves, and Elevyn works closely with NGOs and field partners on training, consultancy and advisory.

I reached out to Devan to find out more about the project and how it started.

Elevyn started of as an idea to highlight stories of social entrepreneurs doing great work. It was an evolving idea, as our team traveled and backpacked our way to places like Sabah, Malaysia and Chiang Rai, Thailand and interviewed people from Sri Lanka, where communities were producing hand made items. We realized one of the big problems for artisans was access to market and obtaining a fair price for the work they were putting into it.

Devan also outlines on his blog more details about the project.

With Elevyn, we particularly wanted to focus on communities in rural areas, many were impoverished because they did not have access to markets. As a result, traditional skills like natural dyeing were being lost, and motivation was low.

In urban communities, we met artisans who were starting to regain confidence in themselves after life changing events, from the effects of landmines and polio to single mothers trying to relearn new skills.

I felt that with applying business tools to sustain local handicraft projects, innovations in web 2.0 to achieve transparency between the market and the artisan, and a whole new way of approaching social work to help improve human lives, we could enable new generations of self independent artisans, and support the good work that our field partners were already doing.

Giving marginalized social entrepreneurs a chance to build their businesses through direct connections with the internets and SMS [deets]. Very Kiva-like innovation. Elevyn was even named top 100 social innovations of 2008 by NetExploratuer.

This goal to connect with 125 artisans in six months started in November and will culminate in May for World Fair Trade Day. In the true nature of web 2.0, you can follow their progress toward their goal through twitter, the Facebook or just keep browsing their site. Devan is also giving updates on the Action page, so while you check that out go ahead and make your pledge of support.