From rugs to riches

9:36am Thursday 19th June 2008

Sharon Griffiths meets Heather Ritchie, who is using her creative skills as a rug maker to help women in Africa make a living.

RUG maker Heather Ritchie was never one to spend her holidays lying on the beach, which is how a remarkable project was born.

Rug Aid teaches some of the poorest market for those. "We're always learning, but already we can see that things are happening."

What she would also like is a proper building for the rugs and materials.

"Most of these people live in village compounds with huts and sand. Basically they live outside and the huts are just for sleeping. There is one well for 35 people.

So, of course, the rugs get dirty. When I'm there I take them back to my hotel and wash them all in the shower. If we had a building, we could keep everything clean and safe."

It would also act as a focal point. "I've been round the hotels and the tour bus companies so that they put GOVI school on one of their stops. If we have bus loads of tourists calling regularly, it would be a wonderful outlet for the work.

She's working with Rotary groups at home and in The Gambia and has some support from rug makers all over the world. Rug making is a global activity.

In the meantime, she has to earn a living.

There are classes and workshops to organise and run, a six-week working tour of America coming up and also talks.

"I give talks and a display of my rugs and now I ask for a £50 donation, which goes to Rug Aid."

And somewhere, she has to fit in her own rug design and making. One of her most recent rugs is a family tree, showing the scenes and people of Sunderland where she was born and where her family lived for generations. At the bottom is a picture of herself as a child, lying on the beach at Seaburn. On the other side is the picture of a beach in The Gambia.

From one to the other is proving an interesting journey.

people in Africa the skills needed to make rugs from the most basic of materials and in so doing, support themselves and their families.

It's a world away from some of Heather's other students - often rich women in America, where rag rug making is, a bit ironically, an art form for the affluent.

Heather, 63, has been making rugs for more than 30 years. Many of them hang from the shelves in her gloriously crowded workshop looking over the hills of Swaledale. These are not rugs to wipe your feet on but works of art - people, places, events all captured with wit and style in rags and hessian.

Every year people come to Heather's workshop in Reeth from all over the world for workshops in rug making. And she also does workshops in schools and prison.

So it was no surprise that her elder daughter decided she need a holiday a few years ago and took her to Zanzibar.

"I couldn't sit on the beach, so I went wandering off, exploring. Away from the tourist area, it was desperately poor and there were women sitting round doing nothing, because there was nothing they could do. The poverty was indescribable."

As always, she had brought a rug on holiday to work on and soon she was demonstrating techniques to the women.

"We couldn't speak a word in each other's language, but I could show them.

Soon they were coming up to the hotel and asking for me. I realised that if these women could learn to make rugs, they would have a way of supporting their families and be able to send their children to school."

Fired with enthusiasm, she returned to England determined to establish a charity to help women set up as rug makers.

It wasn't that easy. Instead, Heather established Rug Aid as a not-for-profit company.

She then learnt of the GOVI school - the Gambian Organisation for the Visually Impaired, the only school for blind children in The Gambia. One of the school's trustees is David Pointon from Thornton Rust, who had made two journeys out there delivering mini buses for the school. Darlington & Stockton Times writer Pip Land made one of the journeys out there with a group of local supporters and chronicled the trip in the D&S.

Last February, Heather - whose father was blind - went out there too, with her daughter, Chrissie, a rehabilitation officer for people with visual impairments, to see what they could do.

"It was just wonderful," says Heather.

"It was a week's feasibility study to see if a rug-making project could work. And it could. It did."

AND work was desperately needed.

"The Gambia has very few resources and although things are improving there, the blind are at the bottom of the list. There is also a very high incidence of blindness. Until recently it was commonplace for blind people to beg, but the government has banned begging, so many families were left with no way to support themselves. The charity Sightsavers does great work there, as does the government and other charities, but there is still much more to be done."

The joy of rug making is that it is easy to get started. "The ethos of Rug Aid is that anyone can make a rug from free or low-cost, readily available materials.

Even those with no sight at all learn to do it by feeling the material under their hands, even creating patterns. As well as the pleasure of creativity, they have something that's unique, attractive and saleable."

That was proved on the first trip when Heather took one of the rugs back to her hotel, just to finish it off.

"A tourist bought it for £5. When £25 is a reasonable month's salary in The Gambia, you can understand what a difference this can make. I took the money back and put it into the hand of the man who had made the rug. He didn't recognise it, as he'd never had so much money before."

Since then, Heather has been back three times. The last time she concentrated on teaching not the blind people themselves but sighted members of their families. "We need to train up more people who can then in turn do the training and help set up a co-operative. That way the idea can grow more quickly."

While she's there, she not only teaches the students but also feeds them. "They can't work if they're hungry."

The project has taken over Heather's life and that of Chrissie. Chrissie - who works for the Wilberforce Trust in York, has pledged all her holiday entitlement this year to go to The Gambia and work both with officers out there and with the children.

It's a family business. Although Heather's husband Les hasn't accompanied her on the trips, he makes all the tool she uses for rug making.

"Our main costs are air fares and accommodation.

Luckily, because Gambia is a tourist destination, we manage to get cheap packages. Because it is still early days, I need to go out a few times a year, as I want to make sure that everything is being done properly, especially the rug making. While people are still learning, I don't want them getting into bad habits.

We give our time for free, of course, but to kick start each project we need to take supplies of tools and materials, so the excess baggage charges are high. We also took out a lot of white canes and spectacles too. We could hardly carry the suitcases."

She always takes out a selection of old clothes to be cut up and used in rug making.

"But the women want to wear them as they are better than the clothes they have and think it's wrong to cut them up.

I end up going down to the markets and buying the cheapest, lowest grade T-shirts."

After she did a couple of radio broadcasts in The Gambia, she's heard that a local manufacturer has offered her a supply of African material.

"That would be wonderful. To have that available locally and in those lovely bright African colours."

She is also working on designs for prayer mats, as there could also be a good market for those. "We're always learning, but already we can see that things are happening."

What she would also like is a proper building for the rugs and materials.

"Most of these people live in village compounds with huts and sand. Basically they live outside and the huts are just for sleeping. There is one well for 35 people.

So, of course, the rugs get dirty. When I'm there I take them back to my hotel and wash them all in the shower. If we had a building, we could keep everything clean and safe."

It would also act as a focal point. "I've been round the hotels and the tour bus companies so that they put GOVI school on one of their stops. If we have bus loads of tourists calling regularly, it would be a wonderful outlet for the work.

She's working with Rotary groups at home and in The Gambia and has some support from rug makers all over the world. Rug making is a global activity.

In the meantime, she has to earn a living.

There are classes and workshops to organise and run, a six-week working tour of America coming up and also talks.

"I give talks and a display of my rugs and now I ask for a £50 donation, which goes to Rug Aid."

And somewhere, she has to fit in her own rug design and making. One of her most recent rugs is a family tree, showing the scenes and people of Sunderland where she was born and where her family lived for generations. At the bottom is a picture of herself as a child, lying on the beach at Seaburn. On the other side is the picture of a beach in The Gambia.

From one to the other is proving an interesting journey.

* To read more about Heather's work, Rug Aid or to make a donation, go to www.rug-aid.org

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