Mata Traders
Mata Traders is a fair trade company that works with artisans in India to make high fashion, fairly traded clothing & accessories. They provide safe working conditions & other services.
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Mata Traders is a Chicago-based fair trade company that works with fair trade artisans in India. The mission of Mata Traders is to work with organizations that educate, employ, and empower women. They have seen that equality in the workplace IS possible in a country as socially stratified as India. No matter what position they have, all the women that make Mata Traders clothing and accessories have a voice.
Mata Traders strives to provide high fashion, fairly traded clothing and accessories to a growing network of socially conscious consumers. All of their products are made in India by women's cooperatives who pay their employees a living wage, provide safe working conditions, and offer services like on-site day-care, overtime compensation, and retirement benefits.
Through their work at the co-ops, women can afford basic needs like food and clothing, and also education for their children. Every year thousands of children migrate to the large cities of India to find work and send money back to their families. Providing income to women is a way to combat the problem of child labor at its roots, and stop the cycle of poverty.
For their fair trade clothing, Mata Traders uses hand-woven fabrics, environmentally safe vegetable dyes, and traditional block printing processes whenever possible. The women who make the clothing work in fair trade certified cooperatives, and come from rural, tribal, and urban slum areas. Every chain in the production process is completely managed by the women, and many become socially and politically active in their larger communities.
For their fair trade jewelry, Mata Traders works with a fair trade certified organization in India that creates avenues of employment for economically disadvantaged artisans and craftsmen in the home-based sector. The goal of the group is to ensure that the entire jewelry making process is non-exploitative, from bead production to the stringing of the necklaces. They enforce strict health and safety standards by making sure that the communal furnaces used to make glass beads are ventilated properly, and by using dust-sucking chambers for their stone working processes.
Mata Traders strives to provide high fashion, fairly traded clothing and accessories to a growing network of socially conscious consumers. All of their products are made in India by women's cooperatives who pay their employees a living wage, provide safe working conditions, and offer services like on-site day-care, overtime compensation, and retirement benefits.
Through their work at the co-ops, women can afford basic needs like food and clothing, and also education for their children. Every year thousands of children migrate to the large cities of India to find work and send money back to their families. Providing income to women is a way to combat the problem of child labor at its roots, and stop the cycle of poverty.
For their fair trade clothing, Mata Traders uses hand-woven fabrics, environmentally safe vegetable dyes, and traditional block printing processes whenever possible. The women who make the clothing work in fair trade certified cooperatives, and come from rural, tribal, and urban slum areas. Every chain in the production process is completely managed by the women, and many become socially and politically active in their larger communities.
For their fair trade jewelry, Mata Traders works with a fair trade certified organization in India that creates avenues of employment for economically disadvantaged artisans and craftsmen in the home-based sector. The goal of the group is to ensure that the entire jewelry making process is non-exploitative, from bead production to the stringing of the necklaces. They enforce strict health and safety standards by making sure that the communal furnaces used to make glass beads are ventilated properly, and by using dust-sucking chambers for their stone working processes.
