FAQ

For 10 years we have been traveling around the world, working and volunteering for various Organizations, from Nepal, India and the Middle East to South Africa and South America. In every place we go we see the beauty and talent of the local indigenous artisan, as we observed and learned from them we made a wish to support more in sharing their work and create a sustainable future for their families. YumaJai is the creation of our life journey and a dream to combine ancient and new together in an Ethical & sustainable way of living.

We had to borrow a page from safia minney on this one, who explained it concisely and thoughtfully in a People Tree blog post:

Fair trade fashion

Fair trade fashion is a product – clothing or accessory that is made by a fair trade certified group that works to the world fair trade organizations 10 fair trade principals – see them here. primarily fair trade fashion is fashion created with a goal of empowering marginalized people while paying them a fair wage and ensuring fair working conditions.

Fair trade fashion is sometimes covered by a wider term ‘ethical fashion’. fair trade fashion may also incorporate sustainable practice, including the use of organic cotton, achieving soil association organic certification, safe dyes and carbon neutral production methods.

Sustainable fashion

Sustainable fashion is a product that is often made to environmentally-friendly standards including eco fibers like certified organic cotton, up-cycled and recycled fabrics, reclaimed and fabric off cuts. Some new fibers like bamboo, hemp and linen are also included, but depending on the methods of processing bamboo and hemp, these fabrics are not always considered environmentally-friendly. Some people will group fair trade fashion under sustainable fashion as the production is considered ‘sustainable’ to communities of farmers and artisans in providing livelihoods and investing in eco-projects.

Ethical fashion

Ethical fashion is a broader term that can encompass fair trade and sustainable fashion but is not always explicit. Ethical fashion has no distinct set of rules, practices or governing body. Ethical fashion emerged out of the broad school of ethical, responsible consumption in the early 90’s, and is based on a ‘do no harm’ principle. It includes fair trade concerns, but also encompasses organic and recycling issues, as well as paying attention to animal husbandry practices and the overall activities of a company. Ethical fashion includes pioneering brands working on everything from up-cycling (reclaiming fabrics from second-hand or end of roll) to fair trade hand-knitted hats and a range of 100% organic t-shirts. For example sustainable fabrics sourced abroad but cut sewn and trimmed in the UK would be considered ethical.

We work to cultivate a collaboration process between young Colombian designers and the Indigenous people.  In a process that connects a new modern design approach together with the cultural and ancestral knowledge already obtained by the indigenous people, we support young promising Colombian designers to connect the old and the new.

We have daily contact with them, and about once every month we meet in their house or ours. The idea is to work together, share time with each other and build friendship.

We start our work in August 2014, since we met them in the street of Cali selling their artisan since then we worked together to build trust and understanding for the present and future collaboration

How much are you paying to the Embera Artisan?