To me, these are more than just earrings, because ‘Azizi Life is more than simply business’.
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Going back over a year, when I attended the Africa Fashion Guide launch, held at the Africa Centre, Covent Garden, London. I bought a pair of earrings, a pair of woven disk earrings to be exact (see here). I remember paying approximately £8 for them and I recall the look on one lady next to me who was almost insulted at the thought of paying £8 for earrings which, I can only presume she knows she could get for a fifth of the price on her next trip back to the mother land. But within that lies the problem. All too often, we freely pay exuberant prices for minimum quality, mass produced and impersonalised clothes and jewellery which in many cases socially and environmentally pollute communities in developing countries, and yet struggle to pay the same (or often even less) for high quality, hand crafted and environmentally sustainable clothes and jewellery, which aim to build and strengthen communities.
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Following on from the event, I had been proudly wearing my red woven disk earrings until one unfortunate day, they happened to escape from me and roll onto the train tracks.
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Bye bye earrings.
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So it was a great honour for Azizi to have contacted me saying they would be happy to replace my lost woven disk earrings! When the packaged did arrive, it also came with some extra treats in there for me to (an extra pair of woven looped earrings and a banana batik card).
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I have an enormous amount of respect for their commitment to paying a fair wage to the rural artisans of Rwanda, especially as any additional income made from art, crafts, jewellery and other activities, goes towards allowing crafts people and their families to afford many things that they struggle to provide for themselves, such as medical insurance, school materials, sanitary and cleaning products, food and nutritional supplements, financial and social counselling.
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You can read more about what Azizi Life do here, and I suggest, where and however possible, you support our local artisans http://azizilife.com/about/our-purpose
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Thank you Azizi Life!
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I find what people do not understand is that to get those earrings for a fifth of the price, you have to pay £500 to £1000 to fly there first. £8 is a fair price, because of the distance these things travel, they have to enter into a luxury market. Unfortunately when some go for high end, like Mona’s Taona ceramic silver earrings, hand crafted (which I .. ahem… helped get into the doors of Danaqa World Chic and blogged about too on my blog), they were not very easy to sell. But they are a beautifully original idea. I am glad Danaqa are not giving up, they remain bullish about them and will order more. Hopefully the market catches on soon. Perhaps I should wear my set and model them huh? :)
Lol! You should model them Freedes!!! Your so right though, it’s like people have no concept of social responsibility. I think people think clothes grow on trees, not realising what we spend in the cheapest of high street retailers is what families get for manufacturing those clothes for a year! And yet we turn up our noses when someone wants to add £2 or £3 more to an item so that the maker can afford to sustain the basic requirements to survive…. Not cool.