Folk art empowers Chinese ethnic women with UN help
- By Chen Boyuan
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 3, 2016
Two rural women of the Yi ethnic group from Yunnan Province described in Beijing on Tuesday how much their life had been changed by a UN-led women empowerment plan carried out over the past four years.
![Patrick Haverman, deputy director of UNDP in China, buys an embroidery art work from the women of the Yi ethnic group on Tuesday in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20160203/7427ea210acc181bad6719.jpg "Patrick Haverman, deputy director of UNDP in China, buys an embroidery art work from the women of the Yi ethnic group on Tuesday in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]") |
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Patrick Haverman, deputy director of UNDP in China, buys an embroidery art work from the women of the Yi ethnic group on Tuesday in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn] |
Li Jiyan and Li Lifen were representatives of a group of poverty-stricken women in Yunnan's Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture who managed to raise their family income and, subsequently, their social status by ethnic embroidery, a traditional folk art treated as a pastime before the UN-led project broadened their outlook.
Li Jiyan, her village's chief of the ethnic embroidery association, said she started to learn embroidery when she was 5-6 years old, as a skill and a tradition to be learnt by all local Yi women. However, it was at virtually as a hobby and no one ever thought it could be used to lift them out of poverty.
"My family, like most others, could only get some 1,000 yuan (US$153) for a year of toil in the fields planting taro in the late 1990s. In order to improve the family livelihood, I started to try selling my own embroidery works in 2002," she said.
The first month's sale brought in roughly the same income as a year of taro planting. That was the moment she realized her own art technique could make a difference for not just her own family but also others in the neighborhood.
In 2012, the UN Development Program (UNDP) joined hands with the China Women's Development Foundation, the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE), and the Mary Kay Cosmetic Company to launch the "@Her Entrepreneurship Plan: Empowering Ethnic Minority Women for Cultural Industrial Development", forming a synergy with already-existing aid programs of the local government and local women's federation, to help capable embroiderers expand their business.
"Led by the project, our life underwent groundbreaking changes," said Li Jiyan, adding the association, in which she is the chief, was a result of the UNDP's mind-broadening encouragement. The association now has 236 members and its revenue in 2015 totaled more than four million yuan (US$611,000). "That's 16,000 yuan (US$2,443) for each family on average," she added.
On behalf of the UNDP, Patrick Haverman, the UNDP's deputy country director in China, said the project was initiated with an aim to empower ethnic minority women by harnessing their cultural resources to improve their livelihoods, with the ultimate aim of lifting them out of poverty through their own hands.
"The project strives to strengthen ethnic minority women's capacity in community organizing, business management, and cultural product development while connecting them to external resources and networks," said Haverman.
According to the UNDP, the four years of pilot work in the community-based poverty-reduction approach has benefited 2,560 people, 90 percent of them women. Their average monthly income has almost doubled from 750 yuan to 1,300 yuan (US$114.5-198.5).
With high incomes, these rural women's family and social status has risen, too.
"In the past, I did not have an income at all. I would have to beg my husband to spare me two or three yuan (30-76 US cents) just to buy some facial cream; and I had to ask him nicely when he was in a good mood. But now, it's just the reversed. My husband begs me to give him some cigarette money, and I sometimes forbid him smoking," said Li, showing her pride.
In the larger picture, gender equality and women's empowerment are central to human development in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted last September.
Haverman said that the project was unique in that it not only provided ethnic minorities "with flexibility in livelihood development so that they can take care of their family while maintaining a stable source of income, but also explores how the public and private sectors can join hands in poverty reduction."
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