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Zanzibar pearl-cooperative women visit JA show

By Teresa Novellino
August 03, 2009
A group of women from the Zanzibar Woman's Pearl and Shellcraft Cooperative visited the JA New York Summer Show where they met members of the trade at a luncheon sponsored by the Tanzanite Foundation.

New York--A group of women from Zanzibar who have pulled themselves out of poverty thanks to a fledgling mabe pearl business visited the JA New York Summer Show last week as part of a six-week trip in which they are learning more about the jewelry trade.

The Tanzanite Foundation hosted a luncheon for the Zanzibar Woman's Pearl and Shellcraft Cooperative on July 27, where members of the trade and press were invited to stop by to learn about their activities.

The delegation members will be spending much of their time at the University of Rhode Island, where they are learning jewelry-making and marketing skills to help them build a sustainable mabe pearl industry in their coastal villages on Zanzibar, says Karen Golembeski, president of the Women's Jewelry Association's New England chapter, who helped organize the trip.

The women have been creating mabe pearl jewelry using half-pearls they found from oysters along the shore of the Fumba Peninsula on Menai Bay. They have subsequently polished and sold the mabe pearls to local residents and tourists, as well as to professional jewelers, who have set them in striking silver and gold designs. The best-quality pearls sell for about $40 apiece--quite a lot when you consider that the average income in Zanzibar, which is part of Tanzania, is less than $1,000 per year, said Cindy Moreau, from the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island in Naragansett, R.I.

"These ladies are making $100 per week, so it's really changed their lives," Moreau said. "One woman was able to buy enough bricks to build a house for her mother."

In addition to housing, the women have been able to help fund better housing, education, food, clothing and other accessories.

While the women in the cooperative have been focused on crafting jewelry, the men are hoping that with the help of donated materials, they can eventually start a larger cultured mabe pearl business in Zanzibar. The operation is very small currently, with just over 100 oysters in the water. Another pearl culturing site with potential is Mafia Island, also part of Tanzania, and home to the pinctada margaritifera or black-lip pearl oysters. At the marine park there, with support from the World Wildlife Federation, fishing communities are learning about pearl culturing as a way to provide income and also help protect and sustain the marine environment.

The Zanzibar Women's Pearl Initiative was launched in 2004 by the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association, the Zanzibar-based institute of Marine Science at the University of Dar es Salaam, the Coastal Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island and the University of Hawaii, Hilo. The five-year program has been funded by USAID under the heading "Sustainable Coastal Communities and Ecosystems."

Prior to the launch of the program, the oysters were used strictly for food and for economic sustenance, but uncontrolled harvesting had led to a decline in stocks. That was when the organizations stepped in to work with the women of Zanzibar to bring stocks back to healthy levels and find new ways to increase their income.
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