Do you know who made your jewellery?

By Audrey Migot-Adholla, CEO at Yala Jewellery

Picture a young woman. She’s married with 4 young children and every day she walks 2 km to sell milk, earning about £1 for her efforts. It’s easy to see how any additional income would make a significant difference to the lives of herself and her family. Yet this woman is uneducated and living in a remote area, in a traditional patriarchal society. Nevertheless, tradition is the key to improving her quality of life. This woman’s name is Norbabali Rakwa and she is now one of 150 women employed by the BMB Workshop in the village of Talek, just outside the Maasai Mara in Kenya.

I first met Norbabali and the BMB ladies in 2017 on a search for suppliers. Yala didn’t officially exist yet, but I’d reached the conclusion that my “hobby” was becoming much more than that and I couldn’t meet the demand on my own anymore. I’d started making jewellery as a way to maintain a connection to my home country and the traditional crafts I’d learned as a child, so it was a no-brainer to find artisans in Kenya with the same skills.

Norbabali and the ladies at BMB make a huge variety of products, including several of those in the Yala collection, generating additional income for their families by monetising a skill developed through culture and tradition. The Maasai tribe are known for their colourful clothing and adornments, and each clan within the tribe can be identified by their own specific colours, patterns and beadwork.

2017 was also the first time I’d heard about B Corp on a podcast, and while I found the B Impact Assessment intimidating at first, I knew I’d come back to it when the time was right. It also occurred to me that starting a business with the B Corp framework in mind, would provide the perfect blueprint for running a business in the future.

Before I found the three groups of artisans that Yala works with today, my search first led me to several unscrupulous companies acting as middlemen to connect brands with artisans in Kenya. I quickly realised that the payment structures were unethical and unfair, and I made it a priority to find artisans who I could meet face to face, build a relationship and maintain a direct line of communication (and payment!).

With this mindset, I pounded the pavements, knocking on doors and working every contact I had which eventually led me to Jemimah, George and Victor.

Jemimah is the workshop manager at BMB, tasked with fulfilling orders and choosing the designs that the workshop team create. Every completed product is tagged with the name of the woman who made it, to ensure everyone is paid fairly. More importantly, the impact of this income extends far beyond the workshop; due to family dependencies, the work of the BMB ladies has a positive effect on 300 households in the surrounding area.

George is a brass artisan who works with a team of 15 people in a workshop just outside Nairobi and has over 20 years of experience working with very large brands. In fact, George has never advertised his services; people find him through word of mouth because many of the brass artisans working in and around Nairobi today started off in George’s workshop. This includes Victor, who branched out and started his own workshop, working with a team of 5 artisans.

Having visited the workshops, I am constantly amazed by what these 3 groups of artisans are able to create given that every product is made entirely by hand using traditional techniques. In the absence of fancy machinery, the quality of the products demonstrates their skill and craftsmanship.

Fast forward 12 months… returning to the B Impact Assessment was less intimidating and also showed me that as Yala grows, there is still much to do. B Corp certification not only indicates areas of improvement, but also defines the processes and practices that define Yala as an ethical brand. Certain decisions become very easy to make because the end goal is clear — Yala cannot claim to be a success without the success of all the artisans too.

Dealing directly with the artisans means I can build trust and assure them that I have their best interests at heart. It also allows them to speak openly and candidly to me about any concerns they may have. This direct line of communication ensures that they receive complete payment for their work since there are no intermediaries and no commissions that will affect their bottom line. Lastly, the fewer people in a supply chain the more efficient it is, both in terms of logistics and awareness of the people and practices within it.

I’m grateful that the relationships I’ve built with our artisans means that measuring impacts and outcomes is a truly collaborative process with complete transparency. While I understand that very large companies don’t have the ability to know the names and faces of everyone in their supply chain, they can certainly endeavour to find out as much as they can.

I sometimes joke that Yala as a company isn’t about jewellery at all, because the core mission is to improve the lives of the artisans who make the products. My drive to grow and succeed is spurred by a desire to see the artisans “graduate” from the informal sector and start their own, thriving businesses and continue to work with them on that basis.

To bring things full circle: Since working at the BMB Workshop, Norbabali has earned enough to move from a mud house into a cement house and to buy school uniforms for all her children.

A first step for businesses interested in measuring their social and environmental impact is by using the free B Impact Assessment tool. Any company wishing to certify as a B Corp has its performance assessed by B Lab across all dimensions of its business. These companies are on a journey of continuous improvement to ensure business leverages its power to be a positive force in the world.