Eco-Chic Fashion from Brazil

Artists

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 
Brazzil Art’s mission is to ensure long-term, stable trading relationships which are beneficial to Brazilian producers and the environment, to ensure safe and healthy working conditions and to create access to more markets.  Brazzil Arts supports cooperatives, workers who own their own business.  We make advance payments so they have sufficient funds to cover raw materials and basic needs during production.   Many Brazilians desperately struggle to make a living selling their products but don’t have access to the marketplace.  Your purchase gives their communities and families this opportunity.   

Region:
A priority for Brazzil Arts is promoting artists from the drought-stricken northeastern area, where the concentration of poor people is the largest and the largest percentage of the poor are youth.  Public policy supports preparing young adults for jobs that no longer exist.  Job opportunities in this area are hard to come by and once they are unable to find jobs and income, or hope of any future prospects, they tend to become young parents.  Continued poverty leads to crime explaining why youths 25 and under represent 58% of the imprisoned.  Help prevent Brazilian youth from becoming another statistic, a school drop-out, a sexual abuse survivor, an illegal child laborer.

Woven Paper:
This cooperative is a community-based, micro enterprise formed with the express purpose of providing education, business training, work and a living wage for young adults and women's groups living in the arid, poverty-stricken northeastern region of Brazil. 

Their aim is nothing short of breaking the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and hunger that has for too long affected this region of Brazil.  They are firmly committed to both environmental and social preservation while, at the same time, maintaining local traditions and culture as they interact and regain self-esteem. 

Using newspapers and magazines, which would otherwise be discarded and become a burden on the environment, the artisans produce a myriad of beautiful and unique handcrafted items, including handbags, notebooks and jewelry.

In a distinctively innovative process, newspaper and magazine pages are first rolled into long, thin tubes, then flattened and finally hand woven into the final product.  All are finished with a coating of natural resin, which makes them more durable and water resistant while at the same time enhancing the beauty.