The Wicker Project in collaboration with Fodes-5 and the Delft University of Technology

In the spring of 2009, the Haitian community  organization Fodes-5 invited the Dutch foundation Turtle Tree to develop an exportable product that subsistence farmers could make at home. In Haiti, wicker baskets and bags are made by many households as functional items for everyday use, but there is no longer a living to be had in selling these locally. Finding a new application for them is imperative to these communities.

Annemiek van Boeijen, a professor in the Department of Industrial Design at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, proposed this project as a possible dissertation subject for her students. Hester van Toorenburg (24), preparing a Masters in Strategic Product Design, has taken up the challenge…

When it rains, the twelve mile, steep, winding mountain road to Labrousse, one of the Fodes-5 communities, becomes too treacherous to navigate even for a diesel-powered 4×4.  But the women of the surrounding region walk for hours on the narrow slippery trails to visit Fodes-5’s community health center in Labrousse. Every week they come together with Marie-José Bouchereau, a retired nurse from Canada who manages the health care center. It’s a group of about thirty women farmers, ranging in age from twenty to sixty years old.  Some used to work in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s beleaguered capital, in one of the foreign-owned sweatshops. But those industries have left.  Now, all of these women have at least one thing in common: the desperate struggle to make ends meet.

In their weekly sessions, Ms. Bouchereau invites the women to talk about their dreams and aspirations. She hopes the women will become more confident if they express their hidden thoughts. Hopefully, they will start working together to achieve these aspirations. In July 2009, Bernadette St. Vilus, a participant in Fanm Veret, the women’s co-operative in Verrettes, came to talk with the women of Labrousse, showing the products they make and telling them about Fanm Veret’s long journey in becoming a worker-owned business venture. The women of Labrousse were inspired to create their own business. Turtle Tree, which had helped establish Fanm Veret, was invited to develop a product with them that would make use of their wicker-weaving craft. And, most importantly, a product that would generate income.

The community organization Fodes-5 was established seven years ago by Alfred Etienne together with a few friends who, like him, managed to escape from the poverty of subsistence farming.  Labrousse is one of five local communities that Fodes-5 caters to. Six-thousand inhabitants proudly carry a Fodes-5 membership card for which they have paid a small fee. In return, Etienne and his friends were able to attract substantial Canadian investment to the communities and have built two schools and broke ground on a full-fledged hospital. Still, these communities needed a project that would begin to raise the standard of living.  A Canadian NGO is planning to make a survey of potential projects that would provide extra income for the farmers. The Turtle Tree partnership with the
Delft Technical University focuses on a direct small-scale approach to creating a profitable industry.

In September 2009, Delft graduate student Hester Van Toorenburg starts research on location in Labrousse. She will research how the weavers use local materials in their craft such as palm tree leaves, banana tree leaves, and sisal, a fiber made from agave plants..  She also has some ideas for possible products that she will run by local artisans and the women’s group of Labrousse. She hopes to create a few prototypes of new products. Back home in the Netherlands, she plans to survey the market for the potential profitability of these products as well as find possible retailers. Her academic supervisor Annemiek van Boeijen and the independent industrial design consultant Erik Roscam Abbing will advise her on this project.

Please check back to this site for more news on this project as it progresses.