Kosovo:Marketing of soaps, bags and jewellery made by Roma women in Kosovo

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This volunteer request was posted on behalf of The Ideas Partnership. Learn more about this organization's projects athttp://www.globalgiving.org/projects/kosovokindergarten/. To apply, please contact Elizabeth Gowing at office@theideaspartnership.org . Learn more about GlobalGiving volunteer opportunities here .

First of all, the link to the Kosovo Kindergarten project for which we're currently fundraising on GlobalGiving might be a bit misleading, as we're an organisation who works on a range of community projects. We are certainly working on a kindergarten (due to open early November!) but this project for which we need a volunteer works with women (many of them the mothers of the children who will attend our kindergarten). They are partners in a social enterprise called SaPune. You can see our products on the page www.kosovosapune.wordpress.com/produktet and on the Facebook page,https://www.facebook.com/pages/Micro-finance-projects-by-NGO-The-Ideas-Partnership/109621149208211?ref=ts&fref=ts

The information about the community where our kindergarten will start gives an idea of the living conditions of these women - of the approximately 2250 people in the community, a total of 10 have a regular job. Most of the others earn their money by going through the garbage looking for recyclable scrap, and their wives go out begging. Often the parents take their children out working with them.

Our project offers an alternative source of income for the women, on condition that their children go to school. Each month, the profit made by the business is divided equally among the women who are partners in it.

We are therefore extremely keen to sell as many of our products as possible, and would be grateful for help in devising a marketing strategy, using direct email, improving our Facebook and other social media marketing, improving our website, thinking of ways to encourage repeat and bulk orders, and segmentation of potential markets.

We hope that this is an opportunity for someone who has business skills to use these for the benefit of a non-profit - and without even having to travel from your keyboard! Perhaps it's a good starting point for someone interested in working in Fair Trade or similar organisations, and interested in gaining experience without having to travel abroad.

We hope there’s someone out there who can help! Many thanks if so :-)

Specific Skills:

A flair for marketing and communications, including use of social media and websites, and particularly desirable will be anyone who has any direct experience of marketing

If you think you could help with this, please send us your CV. For this position, we will take the first five people who contact us and seem to us to have the relevant skills to be able to help.