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Rwanda Knits Benefit Auction
Posted by: admin | April 4, 2007
An online auction of garments created by knitting and crochet “stars” will help raise money for knitting cooperatives in Rwanda. The auction takes place at www.rwandaknitsauction.org beginning at 11 p.m. Eastern time on April 20 and runs through 11 p.m. Eastern time on April 29.
Rwanda Knits was founded by Cari Clement in 2003 and provides hand-operated, American-made knitting machines, plus technical and business training to low-income women in Rwanda to enable them to earn a living through knitting. More than 1,500 women have learned to use the knitting machines in 17 different women’s cooperatives across the country.
Before Rwanda Knits, most of these women and their teachers were subsistence farmers, dependent on help from family or friends, or lived in refugee camps, and most of them were either widowed by the genocide or AIDS. Rwanda Knits focuses on helping women who do not have a reliable source of income and who are making less than $1 per day. Since 2005, the teachers have earned several hundred dollars from both teaching and making items for export.
Last May, Rwanda Knits conducted a four-day business-training workshop for members of the 17 cooperatives. Since then, the cooperatives have practiced their new business skills and secured orders for more than 1,000 children’s sweaters, which are a component of every school’s uniform. Filling these orders will bring more than $500 to each of the 17 cooperatives, but it requires purchasing yarn.
To fund the yarn purchase, Clement and her non-profit organization, the Fiber and Craft Entrepreneurial Development Center, will conduct its first online auction of “star” sweaters, original garments by popular designers, including Nicky Epstein, Gayle Bunn, Doris Chan, and many others. Also, designer Mary Engelbreit has donated two hand-signed lithographs to the auction.
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