Our beautiful handwoven baskets are a hit in the Danaqa store...here is the story behind them.
Zambezi Baskets is a community driven social enterprise that designs produces and exports hand-woven home decor items made from natural fibres.
Operating from Zambia and Zimbabwe Zambezi Baskets employs over 60 rural families who express their culture and talents to create products that are beautiful, functional and durable. Our artisans advance themselves, raise stronger families, stimulate their local economies and inspire the world around them.
Artisan Powered
Artisans are the driving force behind Zambezi Baskets and the ultimate reason it exits. As artisan leaders gain skills, knowledge and economic independence, they assume greater levels of responsibility in the enterprise. Zambezi Baskets goes beyond fair trade wage scales to pay its artisans livable wages.
Ethical
Our natural hand made products preserve cultural traditions and the local environment. The ilala palm and bark used in production are cultivated locally, Zambezi Baskets revives the importance of basket weaving in the area by enabling women to pass on their basket weaving skills to their daughters as income generating opportunity.
> Zambezi Baskets opperates in some of the poorest rural areas in the region between Zambia and Zimbabwe
> 78% of household report food scarcity.
> The average annual income is less than $110.
There is no industry or manufactor.
> 90% of the residents are subsistence farmers and fishermen..
> Zambezi Baskets is the only economic development project for women in the area.
> The empoverment of women is key to:
> raising child nutrition level
> improving distribution and production of food
> enhancing the living conditions of rural poor and vulnerable population.
