Profile

About

Beej was started in January 2008 by artist/designer Meg Wilkinson and Savar Ram. On a trip to india Meg had a dream to start a fair trade business so she could make beautiful hand made clothes and help people in developing countries . Meg found herself in Pushkar Rajasthan where she met Savar Ram a local man who also had the same dream to help the poor people of his community so together they decided to start beej. With Megs skills as a designer, artist and teacher and Savars silks of working with people and local knowledge they set to finding the right group of people to start the business. Savar knew of a group of women in a small village 20 kms out side of pushkar. They come form the farming caste and were in desperate need of employment to boost the income of their small community. With climate change growing food in this region is no longer as stable as it once was and so they needed another way to create a living. To megs surprise the women had no knowledge of how to do hand embroidery and this surprised her, so she started a 10 day program where each woman was trained in the designs that were required to create beejs first collection. Each woman was also paid for the 10 day training which is also something that is not common in this area. After the training meg realised that there were skills that had been a part of India’s magical history that were in danger of dying out due to modernisation and mechanisation so she and savar set about to try and find others who had traditional skills and techniques that they could use and incorporate in to the beej label. Meg is passionate about the preservation of arts and culture. Some of India’s creative arts have been around for centuries and the craftsman ship is exceptional. It would be a shame that with modernisation and lack of local demand that these things dye out all in the name of progress. you also have whole families and in some cases whole villages will lose their lively hoods if their skills are no longer in demand.

Behind the scenes

our clothing is sewn by our beautiful taylor Jugdish and his wife Jana. Jugdish used to work for a factory in Pushkar earning on average 2-3 rupees per garment bearly making a living for himself and his wife.since working with us jugdish is paid on average 30-70 rupees per garment and in 2 years he has been able to buy land and build himself and jana a home. this is one example of what happens when people are paid fairly for the work that they do. we at beej believe that ethical production is the most important thing when it comes to doing business in the developing world. when people are paid fairly for their work the worries of food, shelter and education are taken away from them, they are then able to care about their immediate environment.

beej's shoutbox