Vermont Card Company Empowers Women Artisans in India

Hope For Women employees pick flowers in Dehra Dun, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, to produce hand-crafted eco-friendly greeting cards. (photo: INDIAnewEngland.com)

The following article is from INDIAnewEngland.com.

A unique greeting card company in Vermont is launching a new venture into the corporate world.

Hope for Women is a nonprofit, eco-friendly card company that seeks to be socially conscious. Each card and envelope is hand-crafted using flowers and other local plants by a group of trained artisan women working in the foothills of the Himalayas in India.

The cards, say owners Evan and David Goldsmith, are a means of giving local workers the ability to pull themselves out of poverty.

Burlington native Evan spent 15 years in the nonprofit sector, the last two spent in India working for a women’s development and environmental issues group.

In 1993, he first watched a group of trained artisan women in a small village make beautiful handmade note cards and envelopes out of flowers and other local plants. They would work long hours and receive little pay for their work.

Evan came back and told his father David, a seasoned businessman with 40 years of experience in product development and creating new businesses, about his idea to create a greeting card company that would help lift the women out of poverty. It didn’t take much convincing.

“Evan knows how to do good and I know how to make money,” David Goldsmith joked. “It seemed like a natural fit.”

The company, which started in 2003 and introduced a wholesale-to-business model in 2006, has seen massive growth in the last few years, according to its owners.

Hope For Women is the most widely-distributed fair trade-compliant greeting card company in the United States and can be found in more than 650 retail locations in 48 states, as well as in four Canadian provinces.

Employing approximately 50 artisan women out of Dehra Dun, India, the company takes pride in being socially responsible and meeting the International Fair Trade Association’s standards, Evan Goldsmith said.

“Right now the big thing is green – everything is moving in that direction and that’s what companies are latching onto. The next socially-responsible thing is fair trade – how it’s made from start to finish. You can have a cotton T-shirt with dye from eco-friendly sources, but it can still be made in a sweatshop,” Evan Goldsmith said. “Fair trade is just starting to get into the arena and we think we’re just getting in at the right time to help people make choices that will benefit them as well.”

David, who is in charge of overseeing the product development of the cards, says that Hope For Women is in the process of creating three different entities.

"Lifestyle" is the regular greeting cards as they currently exist. "Business" is the company’s newest venture that allows the custom imprinting of any business logo onto their cards; and "Home," now under development, will focus on home décor.

So far they’ve landed big clients such as Key Bank and ValueEngine for their new custom imprinting services, and Whole Foods Market has become one of the company’s biggest Lifestyle product distributors.

The women crafting the cards have seen dramatic improvements in their lives and the lives of their families since the company’s creation, and both father and son said it is a joy to see women assuming management positions and adding onto their houses when they go back.

“Some I’ve known for years now,” said Evan Goldsmith. “One woman who I first saw as a shy 15-year-old girl now manages the entire production team. You can see the transformation in how she carries herself – it’s obvious that she never imagined herself in a position of authority like that when she first started.”

Both father and son say the little stories that change peoples’ perceptions of what’s possible matter, like hearing that one woman can send her child to school this year for the first time, or that a family can finally afford to get medical care for their ailing grandmother. Such stories are what encourages them to keep expanding.

www.hopeforwomen.com.

source:  INDIAnewEngland.com

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