Amanda Judge Interview (Part Five)

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Five)

By Ariana

The final section of our interview delves into the Shopping for a Change and Faire Collection Nutritional Empowerment Project, the life-changing benefits Amanda provides her artisans and the inspirational story of Olga, a former Faire Collection artisan.

The fabulous Amanda Judge left all of us wowed with her humility, grace, and passion for her work. She has come a long way from her roots as a college student, visiting Ecuador for the sole purpose of writing a strong Master’s Theses on poverty reduction strategies in rural South America. To read about the origins of the Faire collection, visit Eleanor’s earlier post, part one. 

“I’ve read that you provide your artisans with more long term benefits such as scholarship programs, a no-interest loan system, and an emergency relief program along with a trained member to aid artisans in long-term investments in education and technology. Are some artisans hesitant with leaving older values behind or are reactions mostly optimistic?”

Coming from a traditional family myself, it came to me as a little bit of a surprise when Amanda informed me that a good portion of families aren’t reluctant to abandon old customs, such as marrying off young girls without regard to their education. Instead, most artisans are “really excited” to progress towards an improved lifestyle with a stronger chance at an optimistic future. “Fortunately, most artisan families are just really grateful!” exclaims Amanda. 

Ariana models the Playita Neckalce
by the Faire Collection.

From some previous research, I had discovered that the Faire Collection heavily involves artisans from the Kichwa tribe. A little confused, I asked Amanda to help define what the term “Kichwa” really refers to: the culture, the people, the language, or the location? The “Kichwa” is actually more of an umbrella term, it’s a culture that encompasses a variety of groups. Amanda expands, “The Kichwa people that we work with in the Amazon are very different culturally than the Kichwa people we work with in the Andes Mountains, and they’re both called Kichwa. So the location of the tribe really defines the culture...and the language is different.” Out of curiosity, I asked her how she stumbled upon this main group. With her strong connections, a friend was able to inform Amanda about the Kichwa. And she was very glad about it, too, “Our companies to work together on very different aspects to bring holistic improvements to the community.”  Luckily for us, Shopping for a Change and the Faire Collection are working together in the Nutritional Empowerment Project which will commence at the beginning of 2013, and it’s great that the Kichwa are “becoming excited” as they continue learn more about it.

Since Amanda has had so much experience with her artisans, I knew I had to ask about a special success story she’s come across. She smiles as she reminisces, “The story of Olga is really cool, her family was living off of less than one dollar a day, and then in 2010, only 2 years after they started working with us, they were making $26/a day. So they’re income increased dramatically by 200%. She got to the point where we gave her a no-interest loan to start her own store. She actually made the decision to stop working with the Andean [Faire] Collection and just run her store, because we were able to start her. And I love that story because the idea is not for us to entrap artisans in only being able to work for us, but to be able to lift them up to a different level so they can make decisions on about what’s best for them.” Sounds pretty generous to us, what do you think? Leave a comment on your thoughts below!

Hi all! I’m Ariana. Apart from being a junior in high school, I am also an intern at Shopping for a Change this summer. I’ve learned so much about the marketing world and I look forward to the rest of the summer with Stacey and the rest of the interns. I love multicultural food, playing different instruments, and pretty much anything and everything Nintendo! I hope you enjoy reading our blog posts, we’ve definitely enjoyed writing them.