BY Keith Recker | November 17, 2011

US designer Rachel Roy joins forces with Haitian artisan Gladys Louissaint and the Artisan Business Network

Thanks to designer (and global citizen) Rachel Roy, smooth, fluid handmade shapes of polished horn and bone are making their way from Haiti to stores across the United States.

Roy visited Haiti in late July to kick off the Artisan Business Network (ABN) a new partnership between HAND/EYE Fund and RTM Ltd designed to greatly increase the amount of artisan business traveling from Haiti to the United States. Artisan Business Network received generous starter funding from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which is looking to address the significant challenges facing Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of January 2010. The program’s goals include $1.2 million in new artisan sales before July 2012.

During her time in Port au Prince, Roy visited male artisans working with cut metal and beads and sequins. But it was her visits with girls and women working with jewelry of various kinds that moved her deeply. "When I went to Port au Prince in late July, I listened to girls and women talk about the challenges they face -- including physical and sexual abuse. Helping women earn a decent living through their creativity and talent is very important to me because an independent woman able to meet her needs and the needs of her family is a woman on the road to a better, more empowered life," she said.

Upon her return home, Roy chose a capsule collection of polished horn and bone rings and earrings to sell alongside her gorgeous fashion line this holiday. The line appeared in Macy’s stores and on www.macys.com/haiti on November 15th.

Gladys Louissaint, a 49-year-old single mother from Petionville, a suburb of Haiti’s capitol, Port-au-Prince, crafts each of the items in Roy’s jewelry initiative side by side with her daughter Belinda, 23, and a handful of neighbors. Roy’s purchase is Gladys’s first major export order. She says, visibly pleased with the opportunity to grow, “It's a great opportunity to work with Rachel, and we're hoping it's a beginning of our dream, which is to have a center where we can train young people to learn the craft and provide jobs for our community.  We're very excited to work with Rachel Roy and we hope for a long and successful relationship.”

When asked how this order helps her today, the answer is simple: “This order is helping me pay my bills, support my family, continue the business, and move forward. I'm providing jobs for five different people -- two men and three women, who are helping me with this order.”

Gladys’s status as a single mother means that she bears the primary financial burden for supporting her family in Haiti’s challenging economy. She and her four children stick together, though. Belinda works with her mother. Sons Mickenson and Abel work in papier-mache and macramé, respectively. Gladys’s fourth child, Marie Isabelle raises her children and helps with the family’s household chores. Though their living circumstances are simple and spare, life and work unfold collaboratively and with considerable harmony – under the watchful eyes of a compact, near-identical pair of brother and sister watchdogs.

Artisan Business Network co-founder Nathalie Tancrede, whose nascent export logistics business forms a vital part of the services provided in the program, sees her role as a woman entrepreneur as key to the woman-to-woman power behind this particular order. “The exporting field in Haiti is run mostly by men. Thanks to CBHF support, the Artisan Business Network gives us the opportunity to increase our visibility in an important business sector. Involving women in the exporting business is important because it gives us exposure in the global business world. It also creates more jobs for other women, increases our skill sets and gives us a voice in the rebuilding process of Haiti,” she explains.

Gladys values the woman-to-woman connection, too, and adds, “It’s great that women are helping women because they understand better where we are coming from.  We share the same pain, we share the same joy, we also have kids, we understand how it is to raise a family. So we are really excited to have Rachel and her company make our dreams come true…please wear [the jewelry] with pride: we have put our love into making this [it].  Please continue to support our work in Haiti.”

For more information, please visit  www.macys.com/haiti.

To donate to HAND/EYE Fund’s Haitian artisan grants program, which helps artisans like Gladys with tools, training and more, see http://www.handeyemagazine.com/content/how-donate