Starbucks project empowers women in rural areas

Starbucks China joins China Women's Development Foundation to launch a project on May 18, 2020, to offer skill training to more than 1,500 rural poverty-stricken women in the next three years. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Starbucks China has joined the China Women's Development Foundation to launch a project offering skill training to more than 1,500 rural poverty-stricken women in the next three years as part of its continuous efforts to improve traditional handicrafts and entrepreneurship to boost the rural economy in China.

Starbucks will donate to Give2Asia about 7 million yuan for the Rural Women Accelerator Project.

"Mothers are the foundations for a happy family. Over the years, Starbucks has been dedicated to loving and caring for female communities. Now our reach has been extended to mothers in the poverty-stricken countryside to help women to learn and carry on intangible cultural heritage and improve their household incomes while taking care of their families," said Julia Zhu, vice-president, social impact and government affairs of Starbucks China.

The project has selected about 10 kinds of traditional handicrafts that have been passed on for generations including the ceramics industry in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, and embroidery work by the Li ethnic group in Baisha city in Hainan province.

Yang Chunyan, an artist in Dali of Yunnan province who specializes in zharan, a Chinese traditional method for dyeing textiles, said: "A work of zharan takes a lot of time and effort, and fewer young people at our village are willing to learn how to do it."

Meanwhile, with a lack of designing and marketing professionals, it's hard for their works to get out of the village, not to mention bringing substantial income, said Yang.

The Rural Women Accelerator Project is aiming to build 10 collective communities, offering training on handicraft making, business management and marketing to expand their products to markets nationwide and thus improve family incomes.

Meanwhile, nurturing leaders from local young mothers to bring ancient intangible cultural heritage out of the risk of being endangered is also on the agenda for the project.

Starbucks stores in first- and second-tier cities in China are expected to share works from women in those rural areas by developing customer experience activities with the themes of Chinese intangible cultural heritage.