Our Impact

  • Working with a small team afforded us the liberty to break away from conventional handicraft paradigms rooted in capitalistic ideologies that perpetuate overconsumption and overproduction, leading to resource exploitation in the East.

    • Instead, we consciously allocated resources to travel to villages and towns where traditional crafts flourish. There, we fully immersed ourselves in the stories, homes, cultures, and lifestyles of the women there.

    • While we also worked with existing artisan collectives, our true love lies in finding, exploring, discovering new places where we can work with women out of their homes, and give them resources to produce crafts.

    • We supported those who drew inspiration from their surroundings to weave simple concepts into exquisite textiles.

  • We collaborate with various crafts from around the world, building bridges between art forms and finding common ground in ancestral practices.

    Each craft illustrates ancient motifs, patterns, and stitches to embrace the past while also telling stories of the present. In doing this, we also want to highlight global injustices. Today, while few initiatives weave new designs to tell contemporary stories, we embrace these crafts to connect with their roots and narrate our present.

    Through Sarla, we envision a movement toward collective freedom, using artistry and handicraft as identity, voice, and weapon to improve broken systems and forge a united future.

  • We believe that systems are only healthy if they are built on an equitable foundation. We work very closely with our farm partners to understand the specific needs of the land and people through the following ways:

    • We are committed to paying farmers living wages so they can afford to grow naturally and regeneratively along with us. Since both commodity and Fairtrade prices are not enough to sustainably support this kind of growth, we establish fair pricing directly with our farm partners.

    • We also work with farm partners on building lasting infrastructure such as irrigation systems, solar dryers, and mills.