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U.S. Company Seeks to Support Art, Culture of Indigenous People

By Christopher Connell

From grocery sacks to designer sheets, it is not difficult these days to find products stamped with a patina of doing good, whether it's saving the environment or sharing the profits with a group in need.

But SURevolution, the New York-based designer, has expanded this model, building relationships with artisans of Colombia, Bolivia, India and other developing countries across the Southern Hemisphere - the company name is a play on Revolution of the South - and placing its creations in the shops and product lines of Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Neiman Marcus, Pottery Barn, Takashimaya and other luxury outlets in New York, London, Mexico City and elsewhere.

SURevolution's deepest roots run to Colombia, where founder Marcella Echavarria was born and business partner and chief designer Dina Rothstein grew up. Today, the company not only works with artisans from villages and cities across the country, but has joined with local foundations and nongovernmental organizations to train former guerillas and soldiers in new skills, turning swords, as it were, into works of art.

Echavarria is a 35-year-old entrepreneur who first came to the United States for high school while her sister was undergoing cancer treatment at the Mayo Clinic. She later graduated from Brown University, became a correspondent for the Latin American edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine and helped launch Revista, a lifestyle magazine in Bogotá. She began her own business - bringing artisans' goods to luxury markets - under the name Sustainable Urban Revolution in 2002. Echavarria joined the Chicago-born Rothstein - who grew up in Medellin, Colombia, but returned to the United States as a 15-year-old and later graduated from Boston University and Parson's School of Design - to launch SURevolution in 2005, after landing a contract to supply traditional Colombian crafts to Donna Karan's shops.

There are older and larger fair-trade organizations that work with artists and craftspeople in poor countries. Ten Thousand Villages was founded more than six decades ago and works with 120 artisan groups in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. But SURevolution - a for-profit company - has found a niche in the commercial world. Its operating philosophy, and indeed its name, stem from Echavarria's conviction that the Southern Hemisphere has been marginalized and treated as a poor cousin of the Northern Hemisphere. It is poorer, she said, but "looking at it with a different lens, the South is also very rich in culture, tradition, landscapes, festivals, carnivals, rituals, feasts, colorful fruits and food, dancing, music, families and friends, long embraces."

Her second conviction is that, in the world of wealth, there is a passion for genuine, painstakingly crafted goods and works of art from this other world. In an interview conducted by e-mail from South Africa, where Echavarria consults with the Grassroots Business Fund, she said: "If people have a choice between two products, they will go for the one that makes a positive difference in the world."

Rothstein, 33, her business partner, said by telephone from SURevolution's loft in New York's Little Italy neighborhood, "Our customers want something that is unique, that took someone a month to hand weave, that does not have a logo, that comes from a faraway place, that looks like it has traveled ... that has some intelligence to it."

SURevolution has brought a stunning array of artisans' work to distant markets. The company's suppliers include the matriarchal Wayuus, an Indian group that lives on land between Colombia and Venezuela and consists of often-warring clans. The women make colorful woolen bags called mochilas, each of which represents a month of work. "SURevolution's input has been to create a network of women entrepreneurs" who understand that preserving their culture is more important than clan rivalries, Echavarria said. The Wayuus will exhibit their work at a gallery opening soon at Miami International Airport.

SURevolution also works with the Arhuaco in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, who also make mochilas, as well as with the Sikuani, another indigenous tribe who inhabit a vast territory between the Andes mountain range and the Orinoco River and who make ceramics and ritual stools.

SURevolution is one of 11 companies named as finalists for the 2008 secretary of state's Award for Corporate Excellence. More information on the company and its products is available on the SURevolution ( http://www.surevolution.com/ ) Web site.

Source: U.S. Department of State