A friend of mine told me about a shop outside the center city of Nairobi that I had to check out. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit of a shop-a-holic, so I took a taxi over to Amani Ya Juu. To my delight, Amani Ya Juu is so much more than a store; it is a reconciliation project, a gathering center for marginalized woman, a place of hard work, and an entrepreneurial dream realized. Amani started in a garage with three eager refugee women, two from South Sudan and one from Mozambique. They used their stitching skills to develop a training program and a “fair trade” business. At Amani, fair trade means the women are paid not only a living wage, but enough to send their children to school, and provide for adequate housing and basic healthcare needs. They also value local culture, traditions, and procure materials locally. Now fifteen years later, Amani Ya Juu exports to the US, staffs over seventy marginalized women, and proves to be a self-sustaining and profitable project.
From the exterior, the shop looks like an adorable guest house with a quaint outdoor garden café to its right. Upon stepping into the shop, I’m greeted by a woman in the back sewing a mushroom pattern on a canvas pillow. She welcomed me and asked if I’d like a tour of the production center. While I waited for my guide, I cruised through all the beautiful quilts, colorful dresses and scarves, children’s soft toys and handcrafted kitchenware accessories. They have over 500 products! The designs are modern yet the patterns are very reminiscent of traditional east African styles. I’m reminded of high-end boutiques and eclectic yet earthy brands like Anthropologie and Free People. The products are so marketable yet unique.
The tour of the production center was right behind the shop in a building they call “Pamoja House”, which means “together” in Swahili. We started on the top floor production room. Lines of ladies at their sewing stations are giggling and chatting as they worked. It could’ve been the African sunlight beaming through the production center’s large windows, the colorful mosaics on the wall, or just the smiles from the faces of these ladies, but I felt a rush of positive energy. In the corner, beside the mosaic, is a sitting area of couches, where all the ladies meet in the morning to pray and discuss the work for the day.
The floor below holds offices as well as a chapel for the woman to worship and gather. One of the walls is decorated by their unity quilt, with each patch representing a story of reconciliation from one of the twelve nations in Africa where the ladies are from. For example, the patch representing Rwanda depicts “the elders” of the community settling a dispute by drinking banana juice out of the same pot.
On the bottom floor is the cutting room, inventory and distribution area. Their system seemed incredibly efficient and flexible. From the cutting room, the supervisor assigns each woman an assignment; they can choose to either work at Pamoja or at home (as many of the woman have children to tend to). On the side of the front lawn of the Pamoja House, is the dyeing and stamping area. To create patterned fabrics, they use hand crafted stamps that are dipped into wax then pressed onto the white cloth and then dyed various colors. The video above shows Lucy, one of the original founders of Amani Ya Juu, describing the process; behind her you can see a rainbow of dyed fabrics gently swaying in the wind. I felt honored to meet Lucy and hear her story about fleeing her home of South Sudan and how with the help of an American woman, Becky Chinchen, built Amani Ya Juu into a sustainable and responsible international business. Amani Ya Juu creates not only stable job opportunities, but also a safe haven and a unified community. These ladies are reinventing traditional crafts and patterns and sharing a piece of Africa and themselves around the world. On most items hangs a tag that says who made the product and which country she is from. Amani Ya Juu is a model for sustainable poverty alleviation through entrepreneurial business.
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