Our principal project is to represent a group of women in the small community of Campohermoso, Colombia. We return everything above our expenses to these women and to their community for charitable projects. Colombia is a country with modern, progressive labor laws on the books. Unfortunately, these laws are rarely enforced. Moreover, the country suffers from an extremely high rate of unemployment.

To evade laws requiring that medical and other benefits be offered to permanent workers, employees are routinely laid off before the requisite time is reached, then are rehired by the same employer to begin the cycle again. This occurs in the legally organized sector. Workers in small enterprises and in agriculture are almost totally without protection or benefits, often working 7 days a week for more than 12 hours per day. In the countryside outside the central pueblo of Campohermoso, workers earn as little as 7,000 pesos per day (about $3) compared to the official minimum of 40,000 pesos ($19) per day.

Our agreement with the women in who make the seed jewelry in Campohermoso is that we provide equipment, a workshop, and all the seeds and other materials and jewelry findings needed. The women time themselves making prototypes and we then use 20,000 pesos per 8-hour day (2,500 pesos per hour) as a starting guide for piecework rates, with the expectation that with experience and production in series the women will be able to reduce the per-piece production time to effectively increase their hourly pay.

Our commitment is to take all the profits from sales in the U.S. and divide them 50/50 between the women producers and general community projects (primarily scholarship support for qualified local students to continue their educations).

In addition, the women are producing products for sale in Colombia. They buy the materials at cost, use the facilities, and keep whatever profits the sale of these products generates.

Working conditions are quite different from those in a factory. Women are free to work whatever hours they choose, and they can bring their children with them. This not very efficient, but it is very good for the families. They can also work at home. We strongly believe that working conditions are just as important as pay levels.

In the future we hope to expand activities to include harvesting and selling of seeds both in the Colombian market and in the United States and Europe. We would like to see the many talented people of Campohermoso, who practice a variety of handicrafts in their homes, develop these activities into new sources of income. We also hope that larger wholesale orders will expand employment activities throughout the community.

How the Campohermoso Project is Organized

I (Russell) am supporting the project financially and through operation of this website. I go to Colombia several times each year to consult with the women, investigate sources of seeds and to meet with artisans in various parts of Colombia to learn about different sorts of handicrafts and techniques.

I chose Paula Sabogal, a university graduate from Bogotá, to coordinate the project in Campohermoso. Paula loves Campohermoso and is very energetic in helping the women and the community. She previously had worked for a year in a workshop making jewelry and is able to use her experience to teach new techniques to the women. She is also in charge of developing local markets for selling the products in Bogotá and other cities in Colombia. When Paula is outside Campohermoso distributing products, Jenifer Gordillo is in charge in Campohermoso. (Jenifer's last job was working in a bakery in Bogotá 14 hours per day, 7 days a week.) Her husband is working in another part of the country, and she has a 2-year old, Daniela, to care for.

A False Image of Third World Handicrafts

Many of the websites promoting handicrafts from the Third World portray them as products of "aboriginal people" threatened by development. The truth is that modern civilization has penetrated to the remotest corners of the globe and traditional craft skills are primarily practiced in the home for domestic use or in a few tourist centers where there is a ready market for handicrafts. In many cases, entrepreneurs from the cities have intervened to organize workshops (often sweatshops) to produce these "traditional" products, and they, not the artisans, reap the profits. Furthermore, the low-wage sweatshops of Asia can copy with greater efficiency and at lower cost practically all traditional handicraft work.

For these reasons, we do not offer products that involves hours of skilled and difficult hand work. To sell such products in competition with those exported from China and India we would have to exploit the producers. Instead, we chose to concentrate on attractive but simple products that utilize local natural materials (primarily seeds) found in the tropical forests of South America. We strive for natural beauty, originality, and pleasing designs and color combinations together with affordable prices that provide a good return for the producers. In the future, we will offer the seeds to hobbyists who can incorporate them into more elaborate designs of their own creation.

Diamonds, Rubies, Emeralds  and Seeds

The movie “Blood Diamond” has directed public attention to the evils that mining precious stones has brought to Africa. However, the horrors of West African “combat diamonds” are only an extreme example of the brutal reality of gemstone mining. At its best diamond mining is a dangerous and environmentally destructive activity controlled by an international cartel. Emerald mining in Colombia utilizes children to squeeze into tiny and dangerous tunnels in quest of precious stones for their employers, and many die in the process. The mining of rubies and sapphires involves laborious sifting through tons of alluvial mud to recover a single valuable stone. In the process, river ecology is upset and rivers themselves are polluted. 

Throughout history, gemstones have connoted power and oppression, riches extracted from the earth through the toil of slaves. In the past only the rich and powerful could afford these stones. Now they can be bought by the average middle-class man or woman, in part because the mining methods have become mechanized. But the exploitation and suffering that accompanies gemstone mining has, if anything, only increased with mechanization and the centralized authority of international cartels. And these cartels avail themselves of sophisticated advertising techniques to manipulate even the poor to spend lavishly on gemstones as an "expression of love." 

Seeds—the Symbol of Life

Seeds are not merely the traditional symbol of life. Their use in jewelry arises from a peaceful activity respectful of nature that fosters financial independence and cultural preservation. Contrast the harvesting of beautiful organic materials such as tropical seeds with the destructive mining of gemstones. During the colonial period, while the Spanish conquistadores were enslaving Indians to work the emerald mines of Chivor and Muzo at the behest of the Spanish Royal Court, indigenous people  were continuing to harvest colorful seeds from the surrounding rainforest and artfully craft them into beautiful necklaces, bracelets and earrings. That tradition has continued to this day.

Although seed jewelry lasts a long time, it—like beautiful flowers and fresh fruit—reminds us of the impermanence of organic beauty, of our own mortality, and of the preciousness of the living moment. “Diamonds are forever” is the false promise of the gemstone industry; seed jewelry offers no such false promises of immortality. It expresses humility and simplicity rather than arrogance and ostentation; it celebrates the organic unity of nature rather than dominance over nature in pursuit of the illusion of immortality.  Its message speaks of oneness with the living world around us. Humble people in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador harvest (not mine!) a variety of colorful seeds from native trees and shrubs. They do so working alone or in small groups, never as employees of an industrial enterprise. And the value of seed jewelry derives from the creativity and skill of the artisan, never, as in the case of a diamond necklace, from the cash value of its raw materials. 

Wearing seed jewelry crafted by South American women working for themselves provides a fitting symbol of responsible living in this age of ever greater threats to the balance of nature and to human life itself. It sends a message of simplicity, responsibility and oneness with the living world.