BACKGROUND
As you walk through the villages of Manipur you will find that almost every home has a loom, you will find people crafting baskets, bags, mats and modas. Almost everybody makes something, almost everybody is an artist, a craftsperson, a creator of beautiful things. Often women handloom beautiful fabrics, each design unique to the artists, each piece unique in itself, a representative of the artist who created it and the drop of time in which it was born. Other men and women craft beautiful things out of expertly cured and dried water reeds, carefully selecting the perfect reed for the job. Each piece lovingly crafted by hand, over many days and sometimes weeks. Each person creating two or three pieces a month. However they have no means of promoting themselves or selling their goods.
OUR INITIATIVE
The Shiroi Initiative was created to support these artists, an online platform of sorts where they can sell their creative products. The Shiroi Initiative not only aims at creating a platform to market the pieces, but also works to ensure that the quality and safety standards of all the goods passing through our website meet our high benchmarks. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that we become redundant, that the artists we support are able to work independently of us, create their own successful business and teach their art to the next generation.