Presbyterian Handicraft Centre, Cameroon

About Us

The Presbyterian craft center of PRESCRAFT was built on initiative of a Swiss missionary beginning in the 60 th. It was his concern to survive and to revive the traditional people art of the region that had fallen the victim to the triumphal march of the plastic products. To the one, in order to create straight work possibilities in the populous northwest, to improve the village life, and to prevent the migration into the big cities, connected with all its social and economic problems, to the other, in order to strengthen the self-help abilities and the self-confidence of the people and to show them, that traditional technologies and materials represent a value in the modern world too.

Education and production
The first education and production center with the main focuses bamboo and Calabash is in Bafut. From there, for example, wind games and flutes, spoons and rattles come. Little by little, more workshops were built; 1970 in Bali as center for carving and wood processing and 1984 in Bamessing the pottery PRESPOT. Administration, depot and a bigger outlet are in the province capital Bamenda.

PRESCRAFT is recognized as project of Cameroon's Presbyterian church and stands completely under Cameroon management since 1987.

In the different workshops 5 to 40 employees works on piece-wage-basis. In 1997, PRESCRAFT had 200 co-workers and further 250 co-workers for purchasing the required raw materials. Furthermore, 200-300 home producers market their products with PRESCRAFT. The PRESCRAFT -price is 5-10 percent above the customary in the market price. A contractual solid employment is - according to the Cameroon work law - up to now only conditionally.

Since all producers still go in for agriculture on the side, vacation days are given during the harvest period. There is an internal credit fund that can be granted a loan for festivities or investments. On the end of the year achieved excesses are poured out in natural products that fix the employees themselves.

Each workshop simultaneously is also a training-unit. The practical instruction, which finishes with a certificate, lasts two years. As teaching money must be paid throughout all Cameroon here too. However also the tool, with which can be produced already during the education in cottage industry, is contained in it. A part of the costs is covered through the sale of these products to PRESCRAFT.

The craftsmen get the raw material in the local market or from relatives, which grow the desired in the sideline or collect it.

For example: the Raffia-Palm
This African type of tree offers various use. The roots are suitable for dying, the trunks can be processed like bamboo. From the leaves - provided they didn't have to cover already a roof -, baskets can be woven, and from the middle vein, a fiber that is used for the production of cord is won in a traditional procedure. And finally the Raffia-Palm delivers also something for "body and soul": the juice, tapped from a cut and fermented in heat, yields the just as popular as exciting Palm wine.

Until end of the 80 th PRESCRAFT was able to sell 70 percent of its product within the country, but in the meantime the share sank to approximately 30 percent. The general deterioration of the economic situation, that led to wage cuts up to 50 percent, weakened the population's purchase ability considerable.

Prescraft is member of IFAT, International Federation for alternative Trade, since 1992.

Products: Bamboo flutes and -whistles, rattles, calabash gourd rattles, bamboo products, Bread baskets, Pili-pili-Seasoning in small clay-pots.