Holistically Alleviating Poverty in Madagascar

Founded in 2012, the Stitch Sainte Luce Cooperative was established to develop embroidery as a sustainable livelihood opportunity for women in Sainte Luce. The Cooperative grew to include 103 members, all of whom hand-embroider unique décor and accessories that incorporate traditional craft skills and local design.

COVID-19 prompted several challenges for the Cooperative. International travel and border restrictions led to the loss of the region’s tourist market and caused Cooperative sales to significantly decline and the Studio to become inactive. Additionally, failed harvests drastically reduced food and income, forcing most members to focus on less profitable livelihoods to meet immediate needs. Without SEED’s intervention, embroidery as a sustainable livelihood for the women of Sainte Luce was at risk.

A COVID-19 Recovery Project supported the Cooperative to repair and improve the damaged studio roof, purchase upfront fabric and threads to enable the embroiderers to create new products without the financial risk and, pay for the international postage of a selection of products to keep the international market running.

2023 kicked off very well for Stitch! Following a feature in The Guardian’s ‘We Love’ article, Stitch Sainte Luce and their beautiful hand-stitched embroidery drew in hundreds of shoppers to the Etsy store, almost clearing the current store stock and generating over £1,000 of income that will be distributed across 46 of the embroiderers in the cooperative! A fresh batch of stock has now been added to the Etsy store, check out the beautiful products here!