La capacitación, part I – market trends and relentless consumerism

One of our most interesting projects so far has been working on a capacity-building training (la capacitación).

Since this was such a big project for us, I’ve broken up my thoughts into three posts that I’ll put up over the next few days.

Every two years, Manos Amigas holds a training in Lima for all of its workshops, and pays for the transport and lodging for the artisans who live outside of Lima. Each of their 87 different producer groups is invited to send one representative, all expenses paid. (In the interim, Yannina travels to various areas on the outskirts of Lima or specific areas in Peru with larger concentrations of artisans and provides these trainings on a smaller scale.)

A couple of weeks before the training, Yannina gave us an overview of the 2-day capacitación and asked us to do several things: prepare a presentation on the qualities of best-selling products; review several reports on market trend projections for next year and use those as guides to come up with relevant suggestions for new products that artisans could create for all the different product lines; and finally, as most of the artisans don’t have the opportunity to surf the internet for ideas (since most must go to an internet café and pay for web access), we were to compile images that could help the brainstorming process for new products.

A meaty project! Sam happily tackled the presentation on best-selling products. I started reviewing the market trend projections and panicked slightly about making product recommendations. Who am I to say what will sell well? I usually am shocked when Sam tells me what Global Gifts’ best sellers are; I tend to think, “Who in their right mind would spend money on that?!?” If I were in charge of ordering the products for Global Gifts, it would be difficult for me to order things I didn’t personally like. It would also, of course, not be as successful of an organization as it is!

We had reports from three fair trade organizations to digest. My favorite was a 30+ page report on the profiles of one organization’s two targeted consumers, whom they called Katie and Mary. This organization had done an incredible amount of research on these consumers and the type of people they were overall: their values, how they receive and process information, the types of activities they participate in, and of course, their shopping preferences and habits. “Katie” was 35-50 years old; “Mary” was 50-65 years old.

As I read their profiles, I realized that I am Katie, to a T. Everything Katie does, likes, or buys accurately describes me too. Scary! The report included many photos of the types of homes Katie and Mary might have, including furniture, decorations, color preferences, etc. The organization did a great job of providing a lot of information to the artisans designing products for Mary and me, I mean Katie, and it was all in Spanish. Not only did this organization know its target consumer, it knew its target audience for this report. Impressive.

It was fascinating to look at these reports, especially since I am not an insider (i.e. I don’t work at a fair trade organization, Sam does; and I am a product consumer, not a product designer). To see the background on how to make products specifically for a certain consumer was riveting. It also made me feel a little uncomfortable. To what end are all these products made? Why do all these products need to be made? Why does there have to be four or six different marketing seasons each year, with different colors and accents and themes for consumers to purchase new products?

While I have my share of belongings and always need to reduce too, I try to not acquire too much. Watching The Story of Stuff was illuminating, especially the part about perceived obsolescence and planned obsolescence. Remembering this helps me not get sucked in (at least, most of the time) by thoughtless consumerism.

I obviously buy into the fair trade cause (literally and figuratively). But I guess I question whether the costs of relentless consumerism, however thoughtful, is justified by the real and valuable benefits to an impoverished family. I suppose that the answer is to let my purchases make my ethical statements, and that when I’m going to buy something, buy it fair trade. But I’m still overwhelmed by this process. Hopefully I’ll have a better answer to this in several months.

We wrapped up our projects the day before the training and met with Yannina and Mario to review our presentation and materials one last time. They gave good feedback and then proceeded to give us three days of work that needed to be done before the next day: create 35 cds (with over 2,000 photos in 97 folders from Mario!) of supplemental materials, some of which needed to still be created; create a questionnaire about the content of the Friday’s training; review and add questions to an anonymous survey about Manos Amigas’ work with the artisans.

Sam and I looked at each other and weren’t entirely sure how to proceed. We divided up the work as quickly as possible and finished as much as we could that day and evening. And then we figured we’d just roll with the punches the next day…