A community-owned project enriching lives through online presence

Author : Matthew Meyer
Date added : 2000-11-27

Brief Project Background

In 1994 a young Kenyan and a young American sought to work together to offer alternatives to street youths in the Korogocho slums outside Nairobi. Today Michael Karuri (http://www.ecosandals.com/about/michael.shtml) is different than many of his friends who spend much of each day picking through
trash dumping grounds seeking anything of value. Each morning Karuri produces sandals that will be worn by an online purchaser on the other side of the planet. He spends a couple hours each week writing stories and writing email, often responding to his customers abroad, and discussing online marketing with his fellow sandal-makers and with the Project’s managers. The Wikyo Akala Project, in conjunction with Ecosandals.com, is utilizing the Internet, traditional Kenyan tire sandals, and the creative ideas of young adults to provide jobs and educations to an increasing number of Korogocho residents who otherwise likely would have none.

Project description
The Wikyo Akala Project seeks to train young adults in a marketable skill, provide a basic education, and then provide that young adult with a job that integrates them into the world market. First, the Project recruits a potential sandal-maker from the Korogocho dumping grounds. The Project social worker then meets with family members of the young adult and he or she joins the training team. The adult is then trained in sandal-making, computing, and other academic skills. Once the training process is complete, the sandal-makers split their time between sandal-making, academic training classes, and online contributions to the Project. Throughout, the Project social worker works with the young adult to facilitate their removal from unstable street environments and into a structured program engaging in global electronic commerce and communication.
There are three ways in which the Wikyo Akala Project uses Information and Communication Technologies in an innovative way: through the utilization of e-commerce to directly impact a depressed slum economy, through the production of the Korogocho Times, and through the Project’s daily response to customers worldwide.

Results

Project results
First, Ecosandals.com was launched in February 2001 as a zero profit venture to boost sales of the Project’s akala sandal. Within six weeks of the site’s launch, the Project announced that sales had enabled it to double in size. And Ecosandals.com has not even begun advertising yet! In addition to the creation of new sandal styles and the production of sandals, sandal-makers contribute to the site by composing content that describes the Project and the sandal-makers.
Second, April 2001 marked the launch of the Korogocho Times, an online newsletter that is sent to hundreds of email addresses on five different continents. The newsletter includes some educational products, such as stories by the sandal-makers, as well as business news about the sales of sandals on the creation of new sandal styles. The Times offers our sandal-making writers a forum for small-scale global publishing while also giving those sandal-makers with more of a business inclination the opportunity to market their products internationally. It also offers readers an education in the lives of young adults in Korogocho, lives that many global web-surfers find unimaginable.
Third, caring people these days inundate the Project’s Inbox with comments about what they read at Ecosandals.com. The response to such comments offers sandal-makers, and all involved with the Project, opportunities to interact with people from distant places. Though Korogocho is renowned for its poverty and illiteracy, the Wikyo Akala Project likely offers sandal-makers one of the top cultural educational programmes in all of Kenya simply by responding to the many email messages received from curious and interested Internet users. Though not nearly as innovative, but as important, each sandal-maker spends at least two hours on computer weekly. Sandal-makers learn word processing and also employ educational software as a means of developing their academic skill sets. The Wikyo Akala Project, however, sees its current use of ICTs as minimal compared to what it plans to be. In time, computer-aided sandal research and development will complement an online e-commerce operation based in Korogocho.
At its most basic level, the Wikyo Akala Project is not about making sandals or utilizing new technologies. It is about doing all of those things as a means of building personal dignity. As, according to the Project’s Constitution, the sandal-makers receive 30% of all profits, the impact of the recently successful worldwide sales on the individual sandal-makers has been dramatic. Sandal salaries exceed the average Korogocho wage. Every sandal-maker has been able to pay school fees for everyone else in their families. Every sandal-maker has been able to purchase new clothes. Several sandal-makers have used the revenues to start outside small businesses that allow others to sustain themselves. The Project
employs a social worker full-time to help the sandal-makers address a number of issues in their lives, whether it be managing their incomes or handling domestic abuse situations. And the number of opportunities to become a sandal-maker is increasing as well. The Project has expanded to 13 sandal-makers. If online sales continue at the current pace, the Project could sustain at least 25 sandal-makers by the end of 2001. Though largely dependent on the volume of both local and online sales, the Project forecasts that it could sustain a quality programme for 100 sandal-makers by the end of 2002.

Lessons

Lessons learned
In March 1998, the Project’s co-founder and director, Benson Wikyo, died suddenly. The Project’s existence relied on his leadership and enthusiasm. It fell into disarray immediately upon his passing. Friends of Wikyo came together and re-organized the Project, renaming it in his honor. Today the Project flourishes, under the leadership and supervision of a community Board, due to four principles of daily success: transparency, creativity, commitment, and fun.
Both sandal-makers and project managers are openly critical of each other, maintaining a transparent environment with open communication lines in the interest of constant improvement of the Project. Members of the Project solve each of its problems, whether they be management difficulties or problems in a newly developed sandal model, by bringing new and original ideas to old problems. Even with such transparency and creativity, for its first five years the Project struggled to survive. Each of the sandal-makers is aware that those struggles could return again. The sandal-makers were able to succeed through continued commitment to the ideals of the Project. At times that commitment means working late on a Sunday night to fill a large American sandal order. It is the commitment that is needed for the sandal world to take the Wikyo Akala Project seriously. But, of course, as the world takes it more seriously, the Project will be having fun. Everyone is more willing to work harder to address the problems of the Korogocho community when having fun. In approaching some of the most dire problems of health, illiteracy, and crime on this planet, fun has been a necessary part of work.
Recent trips to a Nairobi water park and Kenyan national parks help everyone to keep laughing. The major barriers to the Project are often things outside the Project’s control: export regulations and costs, dysfunctional telecommunications and electricity infrastructures, and the safety dangers of working late at night on something of value in a Kenyan slum neighborhood. The Project has addressed such barriers, though not always with perfect success, through the four principles of daily success listed above.

Development Impacts

Development aspects
The Wikyo Akala Project addresses poverty using the Internet and the creative hands and minds of some of the most materially poor young adults on this planet. The young adults, all of whom have dropped out of school for lack of fees, would otherwise spend much of their days picking through trash dumps seeking anything of value. Instead, residents who join the Project are put to work, developing and making enhanced used-tire sandals, while learning basic computer, math, and language skills, as well as online marketing. The Project, located in Korogocho, which translates as "useless" in the local Kikuyu language, sustains itself through online sales of the sandals.
There are many basic needs that are unmet in Korogocho: health, education, shelter, and safety are just a few. The Wikyo Akala Project provides a growing number of residents with the means for them to address their own needs. And the result is a growing corps of sandal-makers who can walk around their neighborhood with greater levels of pride, self-confidence, and dignity.

The Information Age for most across the developing world has been about the developing world learning information from the developed. The Wikyo Akala Project turns that calculus upside-down. The Project is about the developing, those from a neighborhood that many call "useless," using creativity and information and communication technologies to offer knowledge, and a few products, to those in the developed world.

Project Information

Organisation : Wikyo Akala Project
URL : http://www.ecosandals.com
Total budget in US$ : $1800 monthly
Country of activity: Kenya [KE]

Are there any partners involved : yes
What is partners role?: Ecosandals.com -- sells sandals online and throughout North America

Contact Information

Matthew Meyer
meyerm@umich.edu

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