Our Mission in Products... Hand Embroidery

Hand embroidery on MarketPlace garments is an important factor in enabling women to work and earn a living. Because they are also responsible for running their households, including shopping for food, cooking, cleaning, and childcare, they need to be able to work from home. Embroidery work can be fit in with their other obligations.

It also requires no bulky equipment. In most cases, the artisan only has to deal with the garment, yarn, needle, and scissors. Sometimes an embroidery hoop is used. All of this can easily be stored at home and carried between home and the workshop.

Daycare is hard to come by in most parts of India. Traditionally children were looked after by the extended family in the family home. However, since the women have moved to Mumbai from their villages, they do not have much family support. Hand embroidery allows women to work from home and is an essential tool in our philosophy of empowering women.

Because our mission is to work with women who are not able to find work elsewhere, we have developed a number of strategies to get them earning quickly. Most women are taught from an early age to sew, mending clothing and recycling old clothes into quilts. We build on that ability by introducing them to embroidery. The stitches are simple, with about 4 to 6 basic stitches used in combinations and with variations. After only 3 hours of training, the women are ready to go!