Brent Adams is on a mission to collect neckties. He has received 100, but would not mind 1,000 before he leaves for Haiti in three weeks. The ties will benefit Ties That Matter, an Atlanta-based organization that teaches low income women to make and sell products created from recycled and donated neckties.
The primary focus is in Haiti where it helps women form craft co-operatives that provide reliable income for themselves and their villages.
Adams has been going to Haiti for the past 16 years to provide clean water, serve food, and give back to local areas in La Gonave Island. “About 100,000 people live there, and it’s a pretty isolated place,” shared Adams, who went to the island through the Covenant Presbyterian Church. “There is not a lot of employment and resources such as medical treatment or markets for food are not that accessible.”
With scant opportunities of employment, “we realized we needed to find a way to make the community self-sustainable by teaching the women to sew,” he said. Through his church, he met local artist Laura Martin, the founder of Ties That Matter.
Martin said, “When we learned that we could extend teaching arts and crafts to the Haitian women of La Gonave, it was a great opportunity to get involved.” Ties, Martin says, are perfect fabrics to recycle and with vibrant colors, the dolls and hand bags the women sew are appealing. She also piloted a program similar to this locally.
Martin and her team have currently trained 70 women who make handcrafted dolls. The amount of dolls made is subjective to the women and their individual priorities. “Some women don’t have children or as many responsibilities so they can make more than another woman who has higher responsibilities,” explained Martin.
The dolls, after undergoing quality control, are brought back to the Atlanta and sold online, at craft fairs, and more. The money collected is then wired back to the team in Haiti which is fairly distributed amongst the women. In 2012, the nonprofit matched the amount the women earned in the year. Adding $1,000 to the earnings, the women collectively invested in textbooks for their children’s education.
In 2013, Martin is planning to revitalize this effort in Atlanta. “We are a global community and we want this effort to certainly help the local areas as well,” she shares. In addition to the handcrafted dolls, Martin is working on releasing on a “superhero” doll for to reinforce to the children that they too can be superheroes.
With local help, such as Adams’ effort to collect neckties, Ties That Matter has supplied enough fabric for approximately 1,000 dolls since it began its effort in 2009. Through this effort, the nonprofit’s goal is to offer each woman $500 per year— the annual Haitian wage.
Adams will heading to Haiti on March 16, and wants to meet his goal of 1,000 ties. “This is a simple way to give back to a community in need and relay an effort that is really making a difference to these women and their families.”
To get involved with Ties That Matter, contact Laura Martin at laura@tiesthatmatter.org
In other news: The third annual "i have a voice gala" held on Feb. 2 at The Ritz-Carlton, Atlanta, raised $206,720 for GiGi's Playhouse Atlanta. The funds raised will continue to provide free early education and therapy-styled programs at the midtown location and to spread GiGi's impact by opening more centers across the greater metropolitan Atlanta area. GiGi's Playhouse is dedicated to providing free programs and therapies to families and individuals who have Down syndrome.
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