Starter Kit. Idea 162 of 500. Cluster 7
Traditional craft apprenticeships, paid and certified
The mechanism, from the book
The tiny business pathway. A rural woman with an exceptional product should not need photography, English copy, packaging design and a distributor before the world can find her.
The first step
Ask a master craftsperson near you, a brass worker, lacquer maker or weaver, whether they would take one apprentice for 6 months if the apprentice's stipend were paid. Then approach a hotel or exporter that sells the craft and ask whether they would fund that stipend in return for first call on the finished pieces. One funded apprenticeship is the model.
- Who pays first
- A hotel or exporter that sells the craft and needs a reliable supply once the older makers retire.
- What leaves today
- Craft skills die with the masters when nobody is paid to learn them, so the island loses products only it can make.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask whether they support apprenticeships with master craftspeople.
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask how a craft apprenticeship can carry a recognised certificate.
Check before you spend
That apprentices are paid fairly and safely supervised, that the certificate is recognised, and that the master craftsperson agrees terms in writing.
Find out these three numbers
- What will it cost to pay an apprentice for a year?
- How many master craftspeople would take an apprentice?
- Who will buy what apprentices make while they learn?
A comparison from the book
Japan. Chapter Eleven
"Meiji Japan employed more than 3,000 foreign experts on fixed contracts, and as the contracts ran out, Japanese trainees took over."
Skills pass on when the master trains someone for a fixed term.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.