Erin Yokel - Crafting Hope

Erin Yokel

Crafting Hope

I met Betty Kinene founder of an export based basket-weaving business, on a hot, smoggy day in Kampala Uganda the site of numerous violent regime changes and civil wars, and currently home to an even more deadly war against HIV. We sat in the shade of her store, Uganda Crafts, discussing our schedule for the next month. After thousands of miles traveled, and thousands of dollars spent I was starting to have my doubts about the outcome of the documentary project I’d conceived a year ago. Betty rambled when she spoke, seemed disorganized and was confused by the processes of making a documentary film, having never seen one. What had I gotten myself into?

Loreta Rafisura, founder of Salay Handmade Paper Industries, picked us up from the airport in a pickup truck. She took us out for Chinese food and chattered all the way back to Salay, the small fishing village where we’d be spending the month of June. On the Philippines southern most island of Mindanao, we were a long way from Uganda, where we’d started and even further from home. Mindanao was the site of bloody clashes between rebel forces and the government in the late eighties, leaving the surrounding community in tatters. I’d never met a person so unflaggingly happy as Loreta, and I was concerned that getting an unbiased story out of her would be a large task even for the most seasoned director, let alone me.

Over the next two months - one spent in Uganda the other in the Philippines - I learned so much about an issue that I’d been personally passionate about, but had never experienced first hand: the power that small scale, income generating livelihood projects have on transforming the lives of the women they employ, and how those women turn around and change the community they live in, starting with their children.

It’s a simple concept, one that is perhaps more eloquently explained by someone who’s studied it in school, or who’s run any of the many NGOs and microfinance banks who trumpet it’s benefits far and wide, bolstered with impressive statistics and graphs. I’ll leave that to the more qualified.

All I know is what I’ve seen: you give a woman a job, you teach her a trade and give her an opportunity to earn, and nine times out of ten she will take her earnings and plow them back into her family. She’ll send her children to school (ALL of her children, even the girls), she’ll keep them fed and clothed and she’ll push them to achieve. These children, in turn, finish elementary education, finish secondary education, sometimes even make it through university, thus dragging themselves and their family into a middle class that seemed totally out of reach a generation before.

Now take that one woman, and multiply her by one hundred (or four hundred in Loreta’s case). The change may start individually – one woman, one child, one family – but it starts to grow, to affect the community for the better. People are better educated, elevating their community, but perhaps even their nation. Maybe even the world.

As it turned out, Betty wasn’t disorganized; she was just organized in her own way. You can’t be disorganized and run an export based company, manage a group of basket weaving artisans, negotiate fair prices, deal with excess inventory and teach your employees about the importance of safe sex, political involvement and savings accounts.

Loreta was as positive as she seemed the first day, but that didn’t make her blind to the poverty in her community. In fact her positivity led her to create the SHAPII Foundation, a scholarship program for poor but bright students in her community. She still believes she can keep the program afloat despite the economic crisis and it’s affects on her business and community. And with her winning attitude, I have no doubt that she will.

I encourage you to visit our website www.craftinghopethemovie.com to learn more about Betty and Loreta. We’re trying to raise the money to fund the last third of our documentary to be shot in Haiti as soon as we can get there. We have been planning on visiting Haiti since the conception of this project. Being the poorest country in the Western hemisphere seemed to make it the most obvious choice to round out our coverage of communities recovering from extreme poverty. With the recent earthquake, income generating livelihood projects are even more important there than ever. While Haiti has immediate need for aid and medical assistance, the rebuilding of infrastructure can be uniquely aided by income generating projects like the ones Betty and Loreta have started, and like the ones that are currently operating all over Haiti. They provide lasting support that a one-time donation can’t.

It starts small. It’s a simple concept. But I’ve seen it, and I know it’s working. So I know the documentary I’m working on isn’t an expensive mistake. And even during times of great doubt in my abilities, and myself I know that these stories deserve to be told. Betty and Loreta are doing something that is changing the world, and people need to hear about it. They have created business models that are working, and while severely battered by the economic crisis (which we can sometimes forget affects more countries than just our own), they are persevering because they know that with a little hard work and determination, anyone has the power to change their corner of the world.

Erin Yokel (director/producer) graduated with honors from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with an emphasis on documentary film. She’s worked on many projects for National Geographic Television, the Discovery Channel and its affiliates in Washington, DC. This is her feature length directorial debut.

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