Double Blessing, Double Talent

Sev­eral weeks ago, I com­pleted my Ful­bright work in Ethiopia. The next hand­ful of posts here will show­case some of the projects I worked on and reflect on lessons learned. First up, a photo essay:

Tigist and Haimanot Damtew are young entre­pre­neurs who run T&H Designs, a grow­ing jew­elry design and train­ing busi­ness. It’s unusual for young women to own a busi­ness in Ethiopia, but Tigist and Haimanot’s biggest advan­tage could have been their great­est down­fall; they are twins. Accord­ing to the Gem­ini Trust, Ethiopia sees twice as many twin births as Europe. One third of those twin babies don’t reach their first birth­day mak­ing for an infant mor­tal­ity rate is four times higher than Ethiopia’s gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. Tigist and Haimanot lucked out by receiv­ing sup­port from the Gem­ini Trust as soon as they were born. They are best friends and trust­ing busi­ness part­ners who have worked together to develop their business.

Below are some of the pho­tos from the project and an inter­view with Tigist and Haimanot, where they explain how their busi­ness came about, some of the chal­lenges they’ve faced, and what it’s like work­ing together.

Check out this gallery on my port­fo­lio site to see the full set of pho­tos. Many thanks to Deb­o­rah Zinn of IFESH for facil­i­tat­ing this photo story.

Inter­view with Tigist and Hia­manot Damtew
June 28, 2010

TD: My name is Tigist Damtew, and I am a jew­elry designer.
HD: And name is Haimanot, and I am a jew­elry designer and trainer.
HD &TH: We are 23 years old, and we’ve had our busi­ness for 4 or 5 years.
TD: We learned jew­elry design through the Gem­ini Trust.

What does the Gem­ini Trust do here in Ethiopia?
HD: A long time ago, in Ethiopia, no one liked twins. Most Ethiopi­ans don’t have much money, so if you have two twins, it’s very dif­fi­cult. That’s why the Gem­ini Trust was started. We’ve only heard that twins in Ethiopia have prob­lems. We avoided any prob­lems because we got help as soon as we were born. It was very lucky.  My mom gave birth to us in Black Lion Hos­pi­tal. Dr. Carmela Green Abate, founder of the Gem­ini Trust, was work­ing with Black Lion Hos­pi­tal help­ing out poor peo­ple who had twins. My mom and dad didn’t have much money when we were born. They both got jobs work­ing at the Gem­ini Trust, so Gem­ini helped us a lot. They pro­vided pay­ment for our school, exer­cise book, pen and pen­cil every year. They also give us free classes if we have free time after school.

I hear your dad can’t tell you apart.
TD & HD: No, he can’t.
TD: He calls us both “Haimanot.”
HD: Some­times “Tigist.”
TD: Most of the time he says “Haimanot.”

How did you start your busi­ness?
HD: We started mak­ing jew­elry about 5 years ago at Gem­ini Trust. We went to Eng­lish lan­guage classes there. One of the vol­un­teers who taught Eng­lish asked us if we want to train in jew­elry design. So, she taught us how to make jew­elry. We started work with Gem­ini Trust at the NGO (non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion) bazaar where the income gen­er­at­ing pro­grams of dif­fer­ent NGOs can sell their goods. Gem­ini Trust gave us a small space, and we sell there at the monthly bazaar. That’s how we started.
TD: Then, with the help of Deb­o­rah Zinn, our friend from Aus­tralia, we become mem­bers of the Ethiopian Women’s’ Export Asso­ci­a­tion. We export our jew­elry to Aus­tralia, the USA, and other places. We’ve been to some trade fairs also, like in Burk­ina Faso.
HD: That fair was called SIAO Trade Fair for West Africa. When we went there, we sold a lot of our stuff. We meet a lot of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent African coun­tries and saw some of their work. It was great.

So, what’s it like work­ing together?
TD: It’s very nice.
HD: It’s great. We like our job.
TD: Say, if I have one design, I will do that and she will do another thing. But if she wants to make my design, she can do it, too.
HD: Also, if I fin­ish early, I will help her. We make a plan and say, “You will do this and I will do this.” So, if she fin­ish before, she will help me.

What does your fam­ily think of your busi­ness?
HD: At first, our mom didn’t like it because we stud­ied bank­ing and insur­ance. She thought that we had to work at a bank. But, even­tu­ally, she liked what we were doing.
TD: Jew­elry busi­nesses in Ethiopia don’t make a lot of money. So, she thought we wouldn’t be suc­cess­ful. She thought it would be bet­ter for us to work in a bank. She changed her mind because she saw us work­ing hard. We were mak­ing good things.
Did your bank­ing edu­ca­tion help you at all with your busi­ness?
HD: Yea. Like, with how to save money, how to spend money, all that. It helped a lot.

What’s the hard­est part about run­ning your busi­ness?
TD: Mar­ket­ing was dif­fi­cult because our Eng­lish needs work. We needed more expe­ri­ence in how to keep in con­tact with cus­tomers.
HD: At the bazaars, we have no prob­lem. We just talk to them there, but to work on the inter­net, it’s a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult for us because we have to write all the emails. We are get­ting bet­ter though.
I remem­ber you talked before about bead sup­plies are dif­fi­cult, too.
TG: Yes. For exam­ple, if we put one design on a web­site and a cus­tomer orders 50, we can’t do it because it’s hard to get the beads in Ethiopia. Our friends have to find the beads from dif­fer­ent places, like Aus­tralia.
HD: The only thing you can find in Ethiopia are metal beads. For glass beads, friend help us by bring­ing them when they come to Ethiopia. We depend on our net­work to get our busi­ness done, for sell­ing and bead sup­ply as well.

How did you get into doing train­ings?
TD: Our friend, Deb­o­rah Zinn whom I men­tioned ear­lier, she asked us if we wanted to do train­ing for other peo­ple. We said okay, and she taught us how. Now we do train­ings every week at Tram­pled Rose.
HD: Tram­pled Rose helps women who have fis­tula surgery. Fis­tula is a big issue here, espe­cially for rural women. Some women need many surg­eries, so they are in the cap­i­tal Addis Ababa for a long time. And some women don’t want to go back to their home­lands because their hus­band divorced them. Their par­ents don’t want them back, either. Tram­pled Rose is a shel­ter where the women can stay. Becky Kiser, the owner of Tram­pled Rose, helps the women out with job train­ing. They are learn­ing hair dress­ing and jew­elry mak­ing. Some­times they make bas­kets and sell those at the bazaar as well. So, me and Tigist, we train them. We’ve been train­ing them in how to make jew­elry for three years now. Some­times, we help them find mar­kets, also. They export with us in USA and Aus­tralia. Most of the time they work in paper beads, so it’s very beau­ti­ful.
TD: We’ve also done train­ings with the Inter­na­tional Labor Orga­ni­za­tion [ILO]. Last year, we did a five week train­ing for low income peo­ple form each kibele [neigh­bor­hood] in Addis.
HD: We taught them how to make recy­cled jew­elry, from bot­tle tops and old phone cards and paper.

What do you hope will hap­pen with your busi­ness? What are the next steps?
HD: Now, we would like to open a work­shop where we can make our jew­elry and also invite cus­tomers. We started with a small busi­ness, and every year it grows. Maybe we will have a nice work­shop next year.
TD: Also, we can hire some peo­ple there and help them, too.
HD: We can hire 2 or 3, maybe up to a dozen women, espe­cially the women from Tram­pled Rose.
TD: Because now we have many cus­tomers in dif­fer­ent places. They call us to go see them every time they want to buy jew­elry from us. It’s a lot of work to visit with the cus­tomers and make all the jew­elry. It would be nice if we have our work­shop and have other peo­ple to help out.

A few weeks after giv­ing this inter­view, Tigist and Hia­manot rented a small con­do­minium and founded their workshop.