"The Rwandans just wanted to work and support themselves," says McCain.

Purses and a Passion

Posted June 24, 2010

The income from just 15 purses can transform the life of a family.

WHEN JENNY McCAIN BEGAN carrying the purse her sister had sent from Africa, she had no idea she would dramatically improve the lives of people half a world away. But she did know she had something special on her hands.

“I got it and wore it for three weeks and literally had people stopping me in the street,” Jenny says. “I did not wear it a day without two, three, four people stopping me, asking me about it.” Even the clerk at a Chick-fil-A drive-through window noticed the purse lying on the front seat of Jenny’s car.

Jenny’s sister, Anne, is a regional manager with Food for the Hungry, a faith-based international charity. During a July 2008 trip to the east-central African nation of Rwanda, Anne saw the striking, tote-style purse, handwoven in a geometric pattern. She sent pictures to Jenny, a lawyer back in Birmingham, Alabama, where the sisters grew up (and where their family had once had a manufacturing company that made children’s wear).

Jenny, an admitted “purse and shoe person,” asked Anne to ship her the handbag. After her accidental bit of walking-around market research, Jenny started thinking about forming a business. Thus was born Gitarama LLC, named after the home region in Rwanda of many of the purse artisans.

With help from her sister, friends, and two Food for the Hungry staff members who live in Rwanda, Jenny created plastic templates so the artisans could make the purses in a standard size (11 inches by 5 inches by 13 inches tall), designed a coordinating dust bag for storage (also made in Rwanda, and usable separately as a tote), and selected six native Rwandan weaving patterns to make six versions of the purse.

Currently, Gitarama purses are available at Etc. and Gus Mayer stores in Birmingham as well as online. The price is $145 for the handmade purse that takes an average of three days to create. Gitarama also makes napkin rings, handwoven of sisal in a variety of colors, that are sold at another Birmingham-area store, Table Matters, and online.

Last summer, Jenny visited Rwanda for the first time and met most of the Gitarama artisans, almost all of them women. A brother-sister team and four larger groups who work together in cooperatives weave the purses, using banana leaves in rich, natural tans, browns, and blacks. One cooperative member wanted to show the visitors her house. As they walked, she said that before the purse project, her husband was dying, her children were always hungry, and her house was falling in. In less than a year, the income from just 15 or so purses had allowed her to buy the medicine that cured her husband. Restored to health, he fixed their house. She also was able to buy a pig and a cow to supply food for the family.

“She says, ‘You know, my life is entirely different,’” Jenny recalls with wonder in her voice. “I mean, we were just bawling, you know? She went from the equivalent of living on the streets under the viaduct to being middle class. Out of just a few purses. That’s with this company just barely getting started.”

Most Rwandans scratch out an existence as subsistence farmers. Despite the poverty, Jenny says, virtually none of the people she met asked for a handout. “They just wanted to work,” she says. “They wanted something to support themselves.”

The brother-sister team, Narcisse and Primitive, were orphaned in 2000. With the money from the purses, Narcisse, now 23, has bought health insurance and a field for farming, and has begun building his own house—which is important because, culturally, he must complete it before he can marry.

He and Primitive deliver their purses once a week to the Food for the Hungry office. “He was telling them that he couldn’t believe that he could do something that people would pay money for,” Jenny says. “That he could do something that had some value and worth. That’s the kind of stuff that gets you.”

It’s important to Jenny that “the products stand on their own.” They’re stylish, practical, and durable.

“But the great thing about it is,” she says, “by purchasing them—by choosing their handcrafted pieces over something else or choosing to spend money that you might not have spent otherwise—in addition to having this great handbag or these great napkin rings, you’re helping change lives.”

For more information on the products of Gitarama, please visit www.rwandapurses.com.

JENNY MCCAIN and Gitarama LLC are Regions customers. Jenny is an attorney with Maynard Cooper & Gale PC in Birmingham, representing Regions among other clients.

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