HEM Crafts Story

A young couple from India in 2006 who had various ambitions and dreams came together. They were driven by a dream to do something meaningful with their lives and found a common goal of educating poor orphan children and empowering women. They, through their non-profit, started educating 35 needy children in remote villages of North India. Today, the number has grown to 274 children and beyond! They noticed how parents of these poor children worked in nearby factories to meet their needs since they had limited or no land for farming. They saw how these poor souls were being exploited by zamindars, i.e., Landlords and factory owners. Exploitation by employers made many men work harder only to be enticed to work for another month in the hopes to be paid for the months gone by without pay. Women and their children were left undervalued, without education or any opportunity, which often left them vulnerable to being traded and mistreated. Initially for 4 years they took care of the NGO expenses through their salaries but as the number of children grew, they started an IT business in New Delhi and were taking care of most of the expenses from that business. Unfortunately, their business shutdown couple of years ago. The sudden shutting down of their business meant a financial crisis for the non profit. After making quite some observations, they developed a vision to design traditional natural handmade handicrafts and find a global market for these valuable treasures.

HEM Crafts was born out of passion to empower and make the world know about the great handicrafts of India. Some items like warli paintings are made by the children, bamboo items are made by the dangi tribal men and kantha and other handicrafts are made by the women here.

The dream was so much bigger than what the two of them thought it could ever be. So they brought like minded people to work with them on various projects. HEM Crafts has been spreading hope and changing lives since 2008. Babal and Sheetal’s vision and passion has spread to India and beyond since then. We are a company with a conscience and our goal is to transform the lives of orphans, single mothers and poor tribal families.

We are helping these people with the limited resources available to us. We have started various projects in HEM Crafts for them. These projects are, namely, Education and Child Development, Women Empowerment, and Community Development.

If you are still unsure of what we provide, we provide some elegant handicrafts made by rural people. We sell –

• Bamboo bottles which are eco-friendly and are healthier alternative for us
• Warli paintings that have some beautiful intricate designs
• Hemp backpacks that are again environment friendly and a more durable option
• Tea Kettles that are hand painted by incredibly talented children
• Elegant scarves made from vintage saris with love from rural tribal women

You can read more about the products here.
This is the story of HEM Crafts trying to make a difference one step at a time. If you are trying to make an impact as well, you can check out our beautiful handicrafts and give yourself and these people some love or you can donate to our cause and help these people live a richer and fuller life.