About Us
India has a rich heritage and an elaborate tapestry of traditional handicrafts, but unfortunately artisans and craftsmen, especially the women artisans remain undervalued and continue to teether on the brink of poverty. Appliqué art from the Barmer district of Rajasthan has been a significant craft form of the Barmer region of Rajasthan. An Applique is an ornamental needlework done on pieces of fabric which are together sewn or stuck on to a larger piece to form a picture or pattern. In this, patterns are created on pieces of fabric and then these smaller coloured patches are attached on to a larger base fabric. The edges of the patch may have the ends folded under or left as they are; the technique is accomplished by hand. The traditional floral as well as geometric designs are intricately sewn on the base fabric with minute attention to stitch quality and detailing.
Desert Pastorale :
Music, embroidery and bright hues with beautiful motifs, inspired from their daily lives, bring joy and color in the lives of many rural women in the Thar Desert. Life is very difficult in this part of India with hostile weather and living conditions. Development has always been very slow due to frequent droughts and scarce accessibility of utilities like roads, electricity and water.
With an aim to enhancing livelihoods of the local women artisans of Barmer by developing their heritage skills, ACCESS with support from JSW Foundation is implementing ‘Desert Pastorale’, an enterprise development program to empower the artisans of Barmer. The program works with artisans engaged in Appliqué and Mukka crafts. The program aims at breaking new ground for these traditional products through a series of well strung interventions that focuses on the producers, the processes and the products and build their ability to better understand and negotiate with markets.
Desert Pastorale is now registered as a producer company, owned by the women artisans of the project villages. The Producer Company serves as a tool of transforming the women artisans into entrepreneurs.
About ACCESS :
ACCESS Development Services is a national livelihoods support organization focusing on incubating innovations for sustainable livelihoods of the poor. ACCESS was set up in March 2006, with support from DFID (Govt. of UK). to work at all levels of the development sector value chain and implement various livelihood programmes. ACCESS works with Civil Society Organizations, Government Departments, Corporate Sector and Multilateral/Bilateral Agencies to improve and enhance their program implementation and undertake a few national initiatives. To create a sustainable impact, ACCESS pursues a 3-tier approach to strengthen and support the livelihoods sector and implements several dynamic initiatives.