Non-Profit Focus: From Crocheting to Development

What do you think of when you think of crocheting? Maybe you think of an elderly woman wearing an oversized sweater and making socks for her cats, or the sweater you received as a child and were forced to wear whenever the maker of said sweater came to town. For some people crocheting is opportunity. For them it means empowerment.  It started as a small group of guys at my high school who spent their time between classes and at lunch crocheting hats for themselves and their friends. However, it became the beginning of a movement that has changed the lives of hundreds of women in Uganda and Peru. These guys from Spokane, Washington took their love of crocheting and created Krochet Kids International (KKI), a non-profit organization that supplies jobs for women and sells the crocheted wears back in the United States. Their full story can be seen on their website here.

Starting in 2008 in rural Uganda, KKI has expanded and now employs over 150 women between Uganda and Peru. According to the KKI website, women who are a part of the program see increases in personal income and savings, greater access to education for their children and access to healthcare for themselves and their families. While crocheting is the mechanism which funds the project and gives jobs to all of these women, the education and training given in the program is an equally important part of KKI’s mission. To see the impact that working for KKI had on one woman, take a few minutes to watch her story here. 

There are many questions that remain to be answered such as; what kind of long term impact will KKI have on the people and the economies that they are working in? How will women transition from the KKI program and into other jobs or new business ventures? How will the increased education and income affect their children in the short and long term? When leaving the KKI program will the women’s income drop back to their previous levels? Can this model be expanded further to new countries with relative ease?

KKI has built a small/medium enterprise in these regions and have supplied necessary jobs. For some people entrepreneurship isn't the most appealing form of income generation.  Many people favor security and stable incomes over the risks of entrepreneurship.  Rueben Abraham, the executive director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions at the Indian School of Business in Hyderbad, India is quoted as saying:

If you speak to the "survival" entrepreneur, all he or she usually wants is a full-time, formal sector job with fixed income and benefits -- not variable, high-risk entrepreneurship. Therefore, it becomes important to focus on SMEs and high-impact entrepreneurs, since they constitute the formal sector. An expansion of the formal sector not only generates growth within an economy, but also provides viable job opportunities for survival entrepreneurs.

There are many different avenues to creating real change in peoples’ lives, and apparently crocheting is one of them. Crocheting probably isn’t THE solution for solving the problem of poverty around the world, but it appears to be making a significant impact in the lives of hundreds of people involved and impacted by KKI.

Feel free to check out the KKI website to learn even more. All of their products come signed by the lovely ladies who made them, adding a personal touch.


Matt Benscoter

2015 MBA Candidate

Sources:

https://www.krochetkids.org/

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/17/opinion/world-economic-forum-reuben-abraham/