How I Choose the Cooperatives I Work With

Mukakamanzi Theresa, President of Kopabanya Cooperative. She earned more than other cooperative members, became a Master Weaver trained by Gahaya Links.

A cooperative earns a place in the RFB Woven Art collection by one measure: whether the money from a sale changes the life of the woman who wove the piece, and whether that change can be documented. Not a logo on a hang tag. Not a mission statement. Houses with roofs, children in university, a borehole in a village that used to walk for water. I source from six communities in Panama, Colombia, Rwanda, and Ghana, and each one got there the same way. This is the test, and how each partner passed it.

What does RFB Woven Art look for in an artisan partner?

Three things, in order. First, the weaver is the first person paid, not the last. Second, the partner can show me, with names, what weaving income has funded. Third, the partner is honest about what it is and is not, including on certifications. A group that claims a certification it does not hold fails the third test no matter how good the baskets are.

Two of the six communities work through a formal enterprise: Gahaya Links in Rwanda and a Fair for Life accredited enterprise in Bolgatanga, Ghana. The other four, the Wounaan and Emberá of Panama, the Wounaan of the Colombian Chocó, and the Ticuna of the Colombian Amazon, have no cooperative at all. There I work through a weaver directly, a family head, or a tribal member who knows the weaver and visits her village more often than I can. The test is the same either way. The paperwork is different.

Why does RFB source agaseke baskets from Gahaya Links?

Gahaya Links was founded by sisters Joy Ndungutse and Janet Nkubana after the 1994 Genocide, starting with 27 women. Today more than 5,000 women weave in 52 cooperatives across all 30 districts of Rwanda. The company is built on fair trade principles: fair, competitive wages, plus health insurance and other basic services beyond the wage. It holds no formal certification, and it does not claim one. That honesty is part of why it passed.

The documented outcomes are what settled it. Mukamuhoza Mamerita was a subsistence farmer with no cash income before she joined Gahaya Links in 2003. She now leads the Kiyombe cooperative of 130 women in Rwanda's Eastern Province, and under her leadership the group has built 25 iron-roofed houses. Mukakamanzi Theresa, whose first basket sales bought the fabric for her first dress, was elected president of the Kopabanya cooperative at 30 and has since bought a cow and opened a savings account. Nyiransabimana Eliane has woven since 2006; her weekly income let her family resume HIV treatment and put her children in school. Those are the facts I checked before the first tall agaseke ever shipped to me.

The baskets themselves are coiled from sweetgrass (Cyperus latifolius) wrapped in hand-dyed sisal, and the tall 54 to 65 inch floor pieces are built over an inner bamboo framework that Gahaya's weavers spent years refining. I buy every Rwandan piece in the collection directly from Gahaya Links through its US representative, Sarah Mutesi Ban.

Why does RFB work with its Bolgatanga enterprise?

The Bolgatanga enterprise RFB sources from works with more than 5,000 women weavers across 13 villages around Bolgatanga in Ghana's Upper East Region. It is accredited by Fair for Life and For Life, and states it is the only Bolga basket company in West Africa holding that accreditation. That is a real, checkable claim, which is the kind I like.

What passed the test was the payment schedule and the water. The enterprise pays weavers 90 percent of their earnings upfront, before the basket is finished, which matters when a large sculptural piece takes a week or more from splitting the elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum, called kinkahe locally) to the final day of razor trimming. It has also funded four boreholes for clean drinking water and pays school fees in the weaving villages. In Bolgatanga farming is only viable from April through July, so for eight months of the year weaving is the household's main income, not a side craft.

Two of the weavers I have on file show what that income does. Alebdel, 21, finished senior high school this year and is weaving to fund what comes next. Paulina, 24, learned from her mother at eight and wants to study computer science. One honest limit: Ghana baskets trace to the enterprise and its 13-village network rather than to one woman. I can name the weaver for Panama and Colombia pieces. For Ghana I can name the villages and the enterprise, and I say so.

How does RFB buy from Wounaan and Emberá weavers with no cooperative?

There is no cooperative in the Darién. There are families. I buy Panama pieces from the weaver directly, or from a member of the Wounaan tribe who knows the weaver well and visits her village more regularly than I can, checking on long pieces still on the coil. Deposits go out every month or so, and off-cycle amounts go to specific weavers when I know a large piece is starting. The balance is paid on completion. I wrote about the mechanics in Why I Pay Wounaan Weavers Before the Basket Is Finished.

The people are the vetting. Sara Jinguimia of Majé, master of the feather motif, has used basket income to help two of her sons build homes and to pay university expenses for her children; she also teaches basketry in the village. Lubecia Membache, the pawprint master from the same village, pays her daughter's university from weaving, and that daughter weaves too. Maricin Cheucarama Negria is in university in Chepo because her mother and aunts, the Negria sisters, moved the family out of a remote Darién village where school ended at sixth grade, and weaving paid for the move. Every one of those outcomes is documented in a Meet the Maker profile, and every Panama basket in the collection can be traced to a named weaver.

The Emberá pieces, the masks and the woven fish of The Shoal, come through the same kind of relationship: chunga palm (Astrocaryum standleyanum) over a nahuala coil (Carludovica palmata), bought through tribal and family representatives who know the makers.

Sara Jinguimia, Majé. Two sons' homes and her children's university, paid in baskets.

Who represents the Chocó and Ticuna artisans RFB works with?

In the Colombian Chocó, where the Wounaan weave werregue palm into the tightest coil in the collection, I buy directly from the weaver or from the head of the family who represents them. In the Amazon, the Ticuna figures come from a single family workshop led by Angel Custodio, who paints, while his brother carves the balsa base and his wife makes and fits the yanchama bark-cloth dresses. Three people, one household, a clear division of labor I can see. The figures are painted in the traditional four colors only: black, red, white, and yellow, from natural Amazon pigments.

A family workshop is the smallest possible partner, and the easiest to vet. When the person who carved the figure and the person who dressed it eat at the same table, there is nowhere for the money to leak.

How can you tell whether a seller of handwoven art sources directly?

Ask one question: who made this? A direct-source seller can answer with a name for Panama and Colombia pieces, or with a named enterprise and village network for Ghana and Rwanda. A seller who can only answer with a country is buying finished stock from an importer. That is not a crime, but it is not what the price tag implies, and the weaver in that chain is usually the last person paid.

Then ask what the partner has funded. If the answer is a list of adjectives, keep asking. If the answer is 25 iron-roofed houses in Kiyombe or four boreholes in the Upper East Region, you have found a partner someone actually checked.

Pieces from partners like these are not decor that trends and turns over. Wounaan hösig di baskets are held by the British Museum and the Smithsonian. A tall agaseke takes weeks of sustained work over a bamboo frame; a museum-grade Wounaan piece can take a year. Every piece at RFB Woven Art is one of one and is never restocked. RFB has real costs, shipping, customs, photography, the software this page runs on, and the price reflects them. But the weaver is paid first, and in Panama she is often paid before the piece is finished.