Meet the producers: Comfort Amanor, Bead Maker Bead-Making Center (Krobo). Ever since Comfort started making beads for Global Mamas in August 2006, she has become a regular visitor to the Global Mamas office in the small town of Odumase-Krobo. Comfort used to make beads for one of the big wholesalers in the region but now concentrates on producing beads for Global Mamas. The wholesaler often didn't pay her on time and, unlike Global Mamas, also required her to string the tiny beads which was painstaking work and took her twice as long as it did to actually make the beads. Comfort turned her hand to bead-making 11 years ago after many years exporting clothing and shoes from neighbouring Togo. She found all the traveling difficult, especially as a single mother of four. Now, Comfort can work from home and she is one of the few women prepared to make fiddly "seed" beads, the smallest glass beads made in the region. Most of her income goes to school fees for her children and buying materials for her beads, but she now earns enough money to help support her sister's large family. Although Comfort puts in as many hours as she can making the beads, she has started a side-line raising pigs. Comfort dreams of saving enough money to build a house so she can move out of the two-roomed house that she and her family currently live in. She would like to one day open a school where she could teach bead making to underprivileged children. Although she doesn't drive, she'd like to buy a truck to reduce her transport costs for bringing in firewood. Comfort even hopes to travel to the UK one day.
Fair Trade Center, Bead Assembler Bead-Making Center (Krobo). WIP is working with the Fair Trade Center in Odumase-Krobo for the assembly of Global Mamas beaded products. The training center was founded by Gladys Adimer and Thomas Amuzu in 2007. Together, they provide employment to more than 10 young women who struggle to make ends meet. Most of the women, aged 18 upwards, have completed junior secondary school. The center provides training in product assembly and a fair living wage.
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