Embroidering within Boundaries by Rangina Hamidi

Author:Rangina Hamidi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thrums Books
Published: 2017-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

TRAINING AS A BUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR

During the time Rangina led the Women’s Income Generation Project for ACS, she mulled over alternative models for sustainable income generation. Nonprofit, donor agency, or government aid models seemed inadequate for what she hoped to accomplish. In reflecting on her ACS nonprofit experience, she said, “The bureaucracies, the politics, the lack of a real vision forward disappointed me. In the past thirty years of war and destruction, my country had become a nation of beggars. We constantly were waiting to be spoon-fed by the world. I thought that the alternative was a business model. Business offered sustainability; business allowed people to stand on their own two feet; and business gave people hope to rebuild their lives with their own hands.”

Opportunities to participate in two entrepreneurship training programs in 2006 nourished Rangina’s refocus toward a business model for development. Project Artemis at Thunderbird School of Global Management, located at Arizona State University, prepared Afghan women in entrepreneurship and business skills. Rangina described her three-week campus residency as a fast paced “mini-MBA where we were introduced to basic business principles. I saw potential to transfer what we were doing as a nonprofit project into a potentially viable business.” Topics such as finance, management, branding, advertising, and marketing seemed a good fit for Rangina’s evolving business ideas.

A second program, BPeace (Business Council for Peace), applied a fashion perspective to Rangina’s emerging business model. Following intensive fashion training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, U.S. business volunteers traveled to Afghanistan for continued entrepreneurship mentoring.

Rangina recalled a pivotal exercise in the BPeace, “Silk Road Fashion Training.” Participants were asked to create a meaningful name for their businesses. As Rangina struggled, Toni Maloni, head of BPeace, challenged her to think of something valuable to highlight the intricate khamak handwork. Toni hinted at how customers shopping at Tiffany’s in New York associated beautiful, high-quality jewelry with the company name. Rangina identified the word “treasure” to describe the valued khamak embroidery. She also wanted Kandahar as an Afghan identifier. Together they arrived at Kandahar Treasure. When translated to Pashto, it became Kandahari Khazana. Rangina said, “This name would show to Afghan society that this embroidery was something valuable, as the name khazana was associated with a form of beloved historical poetry that is treasured by Afghans.” Beyond the curricular learning that Rangina gained from the two programs, she and other budding Afghan women entrepreneurs were mentored for more than ten years. Rangina still feels she can call on her mentors for ongoing support.

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