What Sky McLaughlin likes most about Dubai is its location, connecting the West with the East. She makes it a point to visit the UAE every time she flies from Canada to visit Palestine, Afghanistan or Africa, the places from where she buys works of art, embroidery and jewellery to sell through her online boutique. On one such visit Sky shared her life's passion with Friday.
Sky lives and teaches at the Alberta University, Edmonton, Canada, but her heart and soul have always been in Asia and Africa. She fell in love with the Middle East when she visited Cairo on a school trip. She was overwhelmed by the poverty and resolved todo something to help.
She took up teaching English as a second language and completed her doctorate in Education Development to be able to work in conflict zones. She spent eight years teaching English as a second language in Ramallah, Palestine and Kabul.
While she set out trying to change the lives of people in conflict zones, their resilience in the face of poverty, their talent and their daily struggle to make ends meet changed her too.
Bringing a ray of hope
Returning to Canada in 2008, she started Gandhara Designs to introduce the skills of these people to the West and give them economic independence by offering buying their handicrafts.
She chose the name Gandhara because the Gandharan people were an ancient Buddhist civilisation stretching from present day Kandahar into India. They were excellent traders on the silk route and were known for being merchants.
"The history of art and culture from the region is phenomenal, and I thought it wasa very appropriate name for my business since it started with the goal of empowering Afghan women," she explains.
It may appear a small even innocuous step to start an online boutique, but for the people who began marketing their goods for Gandhara Designs it was nothing less than life changing.
Take the case of Salma, a young mother of five children. Every time Salma walks her four children to school, in Kabul, Afghanistan, her heart fills up with pride. Only a few years ago, when her husband lost an arm and a leg ina bomb explosion, Salma had no idea how she would feed the hungry mouths at home. Living in abject poverty she lost her fifth child because she could not afford prenatal care.
But she discovered the wealth hidden in her nimble fingers as she began using her embroidery skills to create works of art that fetched a high price through online marketing.
Today, Salma has enough savings to livea life of relative comfort and dignity and is able to send her children to school. She had another child recently and for the first time could afford to go to a hospital for prenatal care.
Salma and her husband are now confidentof supporting the new baby girl through school as well.
There are thousands of women and men who have had a raw deal in life, owing to wars, famines, social instability and abject poverty in the continents of Africa and Asia, particularly. Even though it might be regarded asa small change, Gandhara Designs has, by empowering them, helped scores of men and women move towards a better quality of life and ensuring the future of their children.
Rediscovering the Silk Route
It was an ‘eureka' moment when the plan to help underprivileged families dawned upon Sky. It was 2008 and she had finished a long stint teaching in Afghanistan when she decided to return to Canada. She had taught English as a second language in Russia, Palestine and eventually had moved to Kabul in Afghanistan after the conflict began there in 2005. "During my stay in Afghanistan, I travelled to all 16 universities from Herat to Peshawar to Jalalabad and was touched by the remarkable beauty of the place and its people. I felt it was important to teach these people literacy skills that would give them a chance at a better life.
"I was fascinated by the incredible crafts and embroidery skills of the Afghan women. They made beautiful quilts, wove carpets, shawls, crafted jewellery which I regularly bought from a organisation called Zardozi that helped these women get a fair price for their work.
"I thought to myself, people in my hometown, Edmonton, buy so many things every single day. If I introduce them to these incredible hand-crafted accessories why wouldn't they want to buy these? I watched the plight of women in extreme poverty, struggling to make ends meet, some begging on the streets of Kabul, and I thought they deserved a better life. At that instant I used my savings to buy $5,000 (Dh18,350) worth of stuff from Zardozi (an NGO that works with artisans in Afghanistan). When I returned home, I began having small tea parties to sell all the stuff to groups of women from my family, friends and friends of friends."
Expanding to other countries
With early success, she decided to expand her network of artisans and travelled around. She finally decided to have four main collections - the Afghan collection that had embroidery pieces and shawl; the Nepal collection that included hand-crafted sterling silver and semi precious stone encrusted jewellery; the Kenya collection of ceramic beads and clay jewellery; and the Zimbabwean collection of stone jewellery encrusted with semi-precious gems.
Explaining how it all works, Sky says: "I always believe in paying cash upfront so that the artisans and weavers are not strapped for cash. If I am buying goods worth $5,000, I never take credit, the payments are cleared right away. For instance I haven't returned to Afghanistan for a long time but I place my order after browsing through the Zardozi online catalogue. I then send an email to the women who run the NGO and place my order and send a wire transfer with the full payment. My products are then shipped to me by Fed Ex in Canada. I pay for the shipping, the customs and duties myself. I have been able to order from them twice per year since I began Gandhara Designs. The same work process is in place for all of my collections.
"The Kenya and Zimbabwe groups I worked with were already part of a fair-trade treaty certified by the World Fair Trade organisation that monitored every transaction. Their prices were fixed. I decided to give the Afghan and Nepal crafts people a fair-trade price as well, one which is far higher than the local standard wage," she says.
It's been a couple of years since Gandhara Designs came into existence. Now for Sky her biggest challenge is quality control and tweaking products to suit the tastes ofa Western market such. "I advise the craftsmen on the colours, textures, designs and on standardising sizes in terms of a Western market… I wanted to change the perception people in the Western world had about craftsmen and women of poor countries - that their work was of poor quality. That was not true, the work they create is of top quality and I wanted people in Canada and elsewhere to see that for themselves," says Sky who has yet to break even in her business. "Eventually I will make some profit, but that is not what I have on my mind. I want to run this business and change it to a non-profit model… For me it is a commitment to the artisans who earn a livelihood and I have resolved to be patient for as long as it takes to run it successfully."
Bio
- Who: Dr Sky McLaughlin
- What: She helps underprivileged communities by buying quality items handcrafted by them and selling these via her online boutique, Gandhara Designs
- Why: To assist artisans to become financially independent by paying them fair-trade wages
- Where: A Web boutique run from Edmonton, Canada
To know more about Dr McLaughlin's work log on to www.gandharadesigns.com
