At CRC we believe that life is a beautiful place.
But not for everyone.
There are hundreds of traditional artisans in India, and all over the world,
who find it hard to get by on a daily basis.
Sometimes, even two meals a day is a luxury. Industrialization, mass-market products, and the global consumer’s thirst for cheap machine-made products – all work hand-in-hand to deprive traditional artisans of even a chance to earn a fair livelihood.
Under the umbrella of Fair Trade, we at CRC have been working for the last 24 years to make a difference for these artisans.
And we firmly believe that we have made a difference and enabled them to make their own lives a beautiful place.
We present to you our new website (www.craftresourcecenter.com) and this blog. Through these pages we will highlight our producer partners and their skills, their work, and the products that they bring to you.
We will also attempt to highlight some of the socio-economic issues confronting them and how at CRC, we try to provide them with assistance and support. We hope these pages tell you the stories and travails and victories of these traditional artisans, and ours as well.
It all started with a discussion over a cup of tea. And then, with the support of the Swiss Development Cooperation, CRC was born. Bernard Muller, Dorothea and Peter Ruesch, Rudi Dalvai, Elisabeth Ortner and Heinz Binzegger - all of them guided us through our infancy and we are grateful to them.
After 24 years we can claim to be a stable and self-sustaining organization completely focused on our mission and vision. Much of the credit for this goes to our co-founder Manoranjan Walia who passed away in 2012. Walia, as he was affectionately known by everyone, may have left us, but his spirit is still with us at CRC every day. We will always be grateful to him for bringing us this far and inspiring us to go beyond.
Drop us a line and let us know what you think of our website. We thank you for visiting our website and supporting Fair Trade. We all live in one world, let’s together make it a Fair World.
Irani Sen
Founder and Director, CRC
