Sasha, a fair trade organization, has been working with craftspeople, artisans, and women workers for the last forty-two years. The goal is to enable and empower producer groups and communities to build successful and sustainable businesses. Sasha provides capacity-building inputs, training, micro-enterprise finance, design, introduction to the technology, and most importantly market access. The range covers home and living, fashion, wellness, children, and gifting.
Purpose
To create prosperity through empowering and providing livelihood opportunities for craftspeople in India and promote fair trade as a way of life.
Sasha values the mutual bond between the organization as an institution, and its producer partners. This intrinsic value of Sasha’s network is reflected in the Brand, which is Handmade, Fair Trade, and Contemporarily Indian. The complementary synergy of the creative aspiration of indigenous artisans and the modern, fresh outlook of the professional designers find expression in Sasha’s products and applications.
People
Sasha’s work in market development and enterprise building activities of craft-based MSEs in the informal craft sector in the East and its direct engagement with the artisan communities has resulted in building capacities and substantial business growth of over 50+ craft enterprises (community-based groups and artisan-entrepreneurial units) who are part of the Sasha network. This also helped to translate the benefits of Fair Trade to these producers- increased their capacities, skills, work regularity, income, savings, insurance, and access to health & education, etc.
Planet
As a proponent of Fair Trade, their commitment is to manage the impact of activities and operations on the environment and to continual improvement of their practices. The products, processes and practices intend to reduce the carbon footprint, support advocacy of the circular economy, promote upcycling and recycling. Their creative team, in collaboration with the artisans, works to integrate design with knowledge from nature into product design, use of renewable materials, using water-based processes, without toxic additives, and predominantly handmade. These products have no adverse ecological impacts.