Staples made of recycled wire

KICK ("Kisumu Innovation Centre Kenya") was founded as an NGO in 1993 to support young small-scale producers from Kisumu on Lake Victoria in Kenya.

Since 2005, the organization KICK Trading has been marketing the resulting products through Fair Trade. The small-scale producers create, among other things, handmade greeting cards from recycled materials – for example, wires from damaged motors and refrigerator compressors, used tin cans, and old phone cards. The raw material for the handmade paper is water hyacinth, an invasive plant that grows rampantly in the wetlands around Lake Victoria.

Many of the small-scale producers would have had no chance on the job market without KICK, including young mothers, school dropouts, and people living with HIV. Now they are securing the livelihoods of their families.

More information and pictures of the project can be found at www.weltpartner.de