Asante Network

Asante Network is a nonprofit, all volunteer organization and proud member of the Fair Trade Federation and is committed to helping women in Tanzania and Uganda.

Asante Network connects the women's groups with markets in the U.S. This empowers these women to develop their traditional arts into viable home-based businesses.

ASANTE means "Thank You" in Swahili, so "asante" to Jan for finding information about the Asante Network. She and I will be visiting an Asante batik group outside of Moshi during the few days we will be in Tanzania before the rest of our team arrives.

Beautiful and well-made baskets, batik and tye-dyed textiles (clothing, tablecloths, bedcovers, and wall hangings,) and hand-carved crafts are purchased directly by Asante Network from the Miichi Women’s Group in Tanzania and NEEPU Women’s Group in Uganda. The money the women receive help them to feed their families, to send their children to school, to support their church and to support AIDS orphans. Additional funds raised help to build classrooms, provide scholarships, books and tools.

Volunteers from Asante love to speak to church groups to tell the stories of our sisters and brothers in Africa and how our work with them has changed our lives. You can help too by contacting one of the volunteers to schedule an Asante Network Arts and Craft Fair and presentation at your church. Click here for more information.

Tanzanian Batik Art

Batik Art originated from Indonesia and the style was adopted in Tanzania. In Tanzania the art is made by dyeing white cotton cloth with prefered background colors and then after it dries, hot liquid wax is brushed onto a piece of cotton cloth in the desired pattern. Dye is then applied again to the cloth which adheres to all of the areas that are not covered by the wax. The wax is then removed and reapplied repeated for each color used. Many beautiful sceneries and images can be created on the cotton cloth.

This beautiful batik art is from Arusha, Tanzania. It depicts African women working in the village.

Check out the post below for more about batik and a video from Filex,a batik artist in Arusha.

An Artist in Tanzania ::: Filex's Batik Workshop

Meet Filex Jacobson, an artist in Arusha. Filex has been passionate about art since he was a child. It is what makes him happy and he is good at it. He used to sit at his father’s feet drawing pictures as a youngster, and now as an adult, his father disowned him because he wanted to be a professional artist instead of a driver, mechanic or other form of “normal” work in Arusha. Filex did not give up and he struggled to get the resources for training in several art forms, including that of the Batik painting.

Batiks are made with a special wax painting process and a layering of different paint colors. Originally from Indonesia, the Batik was used as a form of communication to send messages and was brought to Congo, Uganda and Tanzania through traders and missionaries. It takes a half of a day to make one Batik, you can watch Filex in action in the video.

Filex now owns and operates Sunset Art Studio which is located across from the Arusha International Conference Centre. In addition to selling paintings and providing workshops, he employs six people in his studio and his work supports the livelihood of several street vendor distributors.

When Jan and I are in Arusha we will have to stop by to say hello to Filex, to look at his work or perhaps to take a workshop.

Thanks to the blog of keely stevenson for this information about Felix.