Sprout Enterprise® Impact Report 2025: Creating Twofold Impact
We’ve Invested in Artisan Enterprises for over 25 years.
Craft is the original circular economy. The craft story today is what the story of craft has always been – of artisans making use of waste, left over or found materials, of design and innovation to perform the alchemy of material transformation into a product of function and beauty, of expressing and sharing community values, and of telling the stories of each generation. Investing in artisan enterprises improves the quality of life and creates a sustainable future for rural communities with few economic alternatives.
Why We Invested: Du Anyam
R.I.S.E. Artisan Fund has joined Beneficial Returns, an impact investment manager, in a loan to Du Anyam, an artisan enterprise founded in 2014 to improve the lives of women and their children in rural Indonesia. Beginning with 8 women weavers in East Flores, Du Anyam now works with over 1,600 women across 54 rural villages in Indonesia.
Du Anyam (mother’s weaving in the local Flores language) has helped to reintroduce traditional wicker crafts to modern markets while creating sustainable income for these artisans. By providing entrepreneurial training, and creating both domestic and international distribution channels, the enterprise enhances the women’s financial stability while also improving their families’ access to nutritional food, healthcare and education.
Delzur: Weaving a Tapestry of Cultural Reverence and Ecological Harmony
Since 2015, Emilia Torres and her team at the Hilo Sagrado Foundation have demonstrated ingenuity and resilience in their mission to improve the quality of life for Indigenous women in rural Colombia. Hilo Sagrado, or “Sacred Thread,” works with Wayuu communities in La Guajira peninsula – a desert region in northeastern Colombia – to provide Wayuu women with the tools to gain economic independence and escape poverty.