Super affordable artist editions that serve Gandhi’s dream of self-sufficiency in village India. Artist, Aaron Sinift has initiated another project to promote the work of Gandhi Ashrams in India. Click here to support the project!
5 Year Plan Jhola Project is a seva in honor of Mahatma Gandhi. Artists from around the world have united for this experiment in Gandhian economics. It is a NO PROFIT / NO LOSS seva that reduces the degrees of separation between village India, the world of contemporary art and you.
For only $20, you can have a limited edition artwork by a world-renowned artist, created by the people of the ashram.
Artists include: Francesco Clemente, Donald Baechler, Philip Taaffe, Julie Doucet, Jamie Reid, Chris Martin, Sutanu Panigrahi, EJ Hauser, Duncan Tonatiuh, Aditya Pande, Parismita Singh, David Dunlap, Gloria Williams, William Augustus, Orijit Sen, Kalpana, Shirley Bhatt, Suzy Lobodiak, and Marshall Weber. http://jhola.org/About.html
Each artist edition jhola bag is not only incredibly useful – it combines the brilliance of visual artists, spinners and weavers, block printers and tailors to create a true swadeshi work of art suitable for mounting on the wall or carrying books.
Each jhola is made of home-spun cotton thread, woven on wooden looms, printed and stitched by the 800 workers of the Manav Seva Sannidhi Ashram, 35 km north of New Delhi. About 85% of the workers are women; most are elderly or single mothers supporting their families. Each jhola helps people to maintain self-sufficiency and dignity. Each jhola helps prove that together we can create beauty and provide for the common good of all people.
Your purchase price goes to paying workers at the ashram and covering the expenses of producing the edition. Any remaining funds will be entrusted to my mentor and friend Mr Vijay Kumar Handa to pay teachers’ salaries and educational programs.
For more information, go to http://jhola.org/About.html
On behalf of all of us, thank you!
RISKS AND CHALLENGESLearn about accountability on Kickstarter
In late 2009 we successfully raised $15,000 through Kickstarter (+ an additional $25,000) to do the first 5 Year Plan artist book. The book has been a success. It is now in the collection of The Boston Athenaeum, the US Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as the special collections of Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and 20 more institutions around the world.
To date we have given almost $5000 to Medecins Sans Frontieres, $2000 to help artists in need, and provided a new laptop to the Gandhi HIndustani Sahitya Sabbha in New Delhi.
We have established relationships of trust among a core of friends in India and the US who believe in our project and have now already twice worked together on similar ambitious projects.
Each year since 2010, we have done small artist jhola editions (200-500-1000 jholas). It is our hope that with projects like this we can begin to provide more substantive work for the people of the ashram, and be able to provide funds to pay local teachers who work with the poorest of the poor. 5 Year Plan is not charity, it is a cooperation of equal partners.
Our success is due to the cooperation of Mr. Vijay Kumar Handa of the Gandhi Hindustani Sahitya Sabbha in New Delhi; Mr. Karan SIngh of the Manav Seva Sannidhi in Modinagar UP; People Tree Collective in New Delhi, Gurpreet Sidhu, Orijit Singh and their amazing circle of designers; Nandita Devraj of Rudraksh Printers in Jaipur; Marshall Weber and the crew at Booklyn.org; Steven Warner our web tech guru; the 5 Year Plan Advisory Board; and especially Greta Byrum who raises the Sun to me everyday, and without whom I am nothing.
