Victoria Tampoka Nyaabila is a widow with 5 children. She lives in Kongo village, northern Ghana on the edge of the Sahara desert. There are hundreds of widows like Victoria tolling a few acres of land and making ends meet. Victoria, however, is an exception. She is the best basket weaver in the village who has been able to secure independent livelihood with her basket weaving skills, and pay for the education of her five children.
The world famous Bolga baskets are a hot commodity thousands of miles from Kongo. These are sold in Tallinn, Estonia in a PopUP shop set up by an Estonian NGO Mondo. A temporary shop is open til the end of the year, and offers clients handicraft and fair trade products made by women and disabled people of the communities it works in Africa and Afghanistan. Besides baskets, the shop offers unrefined shea-butter from the same Ghanaian community, handicrafts by Kenyan and Afghan women and youth with special needs from Uganda.
On weekends, the NGO Mondo invites people to attend chocolate making workshops or drink a cup of Fairtrade coffee while listening to special guests. Each product has a story to tell, each euro made will be reinvested back into the communities Mondo works with. NGO Mondo is a leading development cooperation organization in Estonia. It aims to strengthen independent economic livelihood of rural women of Ghana, Kenya, Afghanistan, and people with disabilities in Uganda.
The PopUp shop helps to increase funds for Mondo support program to provide skills training for women and setting up ethical supply chain based on fair trade principles for local markets and for Estonia. So when in Tallinn in December, stop by at Mondo PopUp shop in Telliskivi Loomelinnak, a biggest center of creative industries in Estonia. NGO Mondo welcomes you – teretulemast! - to shop for a fairer world!
For more information on NGO Mondo please visit www.mondo.org.ee
Photo: Entrance to the shop by NGO Mondo.
Information provided by Katrin Pärgmäe, Estonian Roundtable for Development Cooperation
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