Press Release
Supporting Pearl Farmers in East Africa
September 16, 2009
Ten jewelry and half-pearl aquaculture entrepreneurs from Zanzibar and Mafia Island, Tanzania have recently returned from a six-week fellowship program to the U.S. which was conducted July 19 to August 29. The fellowship was designed to improve the participants’ entrepreneurship, jewelry-making, and aquaculture skills.
Throughout the program, the entrepreneurs worked with local jewelry and aquaculture entrepreneurs as well as with experts from the University of Rhode Island and universities in Purdue, Hawaii, and Alaska. “Hands-on” was the key word of the exchange – the program intertwined short lectures with field visits and exercises. Business owners in Rhode Island graciously welcomed the fellows to their companies for everything from two-hour study tours to two-week internships. The entrepreneurs visited large industries, such as Stern and Leach, which produced jewelry for world famous “Tiffany’s” to small operations like “Native Sons,” Domingo Taildog Monroe’s silversmith. Taildog belongs to one of the key groups which provided the Tanzanians with technical assistance – the Narragansett Indian Tribe. The Narragansett Indians offered several sessions on beading, shell carving, and silver smiting – in addition to sharing their culture, storytelling, food, and dancing traditions.
The Tanzanians ventured from their Rhode Island base to visit New York City. There they attended the annual New York City Summer Jewelry Show, toured Harlem, and had a tour of the United Nations from the UN Tanzania Mission. Another excursion took them to “Island Creek Oysters” on Cape Cod. Oyster Creek is a small aquaculture operation that is interested in raising funds to help the Zanzibaris build an oyster hatchery back in Tanzania.
The entrepreneurs also did home stays and internships with local jewelry, beading, and aquaculture enterprises, such as “American Mussel.” Working side by side with American small-scale entrepreneurs has been a most useful lesson. “Seeing how American Mussel has grown from a hole in the wall operation to a national distributer of oysters is nice. Being here I’m getting ideas for how to expand my own enterprise at home,” one of the entrepreneurs said.
And it is not only the Tanzanian’s who have learned valuable lessons. Americans have learned about the Swahili culture, and many American volunteers are interested in participating in the return visit, which is planned for late October, 2009.