With over 5.6 billion mobile phones around the world, the ability and methods to foster education, transform conflicts, fight diseases, monitor elections, and distribute food are changing. While the number of emerging world micro-entrepreneurs attempting to solve many of these problems are growing, they still lack many skills and resources we take for granted in the developed world.
The Global Artisan Technology Project aims to provide the thousands of artisans and micro-entrepreneurs in our global network with technology and business skills and resources to help them grow their micro-businesses and better their local communities. Our intent is to provide support for artisans and micro-entrepreneurs to access a larger marketplace and increase their earning potential. We look to also provide a platform for these artisans and micro-entrepreneurs to share their stories and impact of additional technology and business resources on their local communities.
We see an exciting opportunity to leverage technology in connecting customers with our products and our artisans. Over the next few months we look forward to rolling out a number of elements to accomplish our project goals.
- We will continue the conversations through our Global Webinars Series – connecting with artisans, suppliers, and industry leaders to discuss trends in ethical products.
- We will soon be launching our first mobile app on the Android platform – allowing customers to be able to buy designer-inspired ethical products anywhere and everywhere.
- After our Android app launch, we will roll out the iPhone and iPad apps, allowing even more customers to be able to buy designer-inspired ethical products on the go!
- We look forward to building a robust platform providing more insight into the supply chain process of our ethical products.