There are a lot of things $25 can buy: A night out at the movies, a cheap dinner – or a goat.
The third annual Goat Money art auction takes place in Vancouver this weekend, and according to organizers, the event is helping give Kenyan women a voice in a largely male-dominated society.
It all started nearly a decade ago when Catherine Glass, then a biology instructor at Langara College, was invited to Kenya to help establish a field school for Canadian students.
“It was like stepping out of my life,” says Glass, a mother of four and current PhD student. “I made myself a promise that if I went back, I’d try to to give back.”
Glass says one of her most memorable experiences on that trip was a meeting with the women of a Maasai community called Olkoroi.
“The women talked very eloquently about the challenges of traditional Maasai life,” she says, adding that girls are married off at a young age and circumcised before being wed. Many are also sexually abused and impregnanted by their own teachers, according to Glass. “You’ve got all the traditional issues of countries that are poor.”
But four words spoken by one of the women convinced Glass she had to help them somehow.
“We have no power.”
“That line, in particular, just kind of embedded itself in my brain,” she said. In a community where women are mostly illiterate and married to older men who die decades before they do, Glass realized the ability to generate income was crucial if the women were to maintain a good quality of life. In other words, she understood in that moment that money equalled power for the women of Olkoroi.
Glass studied the options available to the Maasai women to borrow money, and was shocked to find out how unreasonable lending rates were.
“People end up taking loans from friends at 20, 30 per cent,” she says. “One woman had taken a loan at 200 per cent. Each month throughout the year, she was paying enough to cover the interest and never even touching the capital.”
That’s when a lightbulb went off for Glass. If she started up a micro-credit loan program, with interest rates to be determined by the borrower, these women could start to climb the ladder out of despair by investing in home repairs, agriculture, and at $25 a piece – goats.
“Goats are like petty cash. You need some fees for school, you sell a goat. You need some food to supplement a drought, you sell a goat,” she says. In Kenya, the creatures are an income-generator, either by selling their? milk or by breeding and selling the goats.
“The women decide what they want to do, the women choose how they want to spend the money, the women choose their goals they’re going to reach for,” Glass says.
The newly created micro-credit program was born, granting the women of Olkoroi loans starting at $25. Once those loans are paid back, the women are granted increasingly larger loans. But now that a plan was in place, Glass had to find a way to subsidize the project.
Enter the Moran sisters.
Kasey and Korey Moran, both young artists in Vancouver, came in contact with Glass when Kasey took her biology class at Langara. When the project came up in conversation one day, both Morans felt compelled to give back.
“[Catherine] is so inspiring in what she’s accomplished in this community. Every time I speak to her about what’s happening there, I feel like I can’t not continue to do the project,” says Korey.
The sisters decided they would raise money for goats by auctioning off art donated by themselves and friends. That event, dubbed “Goat Money” has now turned into an annual fundraiser that is key to Glass’ micro-credit program. It now attracts artists from around the city, some of which the Moran’s didn’t even know before they took up the project.
“One’s turning 15, another is turning 80 this year,” Moran says. Donations now range from grandiose paintings by renowned artists like Vancouver’s Andy Dixon, to textiles, fabric, jewelry and paintings.
“That has to be one of my favourite parts about putting the exhibition together, because I think a lot of people feel inspired by the project,” she says. “They’ll donate any way they can.”
The result is a vibrant, eclectic silent auction that not only benefits the women of Olkoroi – but the often under-appreciated artists of Vancouver.
An artist herself, Moran says she didn’t want to canvas for free donations – a common practice in art fundraisers. Instead, artists have the option to take 20 per cent of the final sale price, or to fully donate their piece to the cause??.
“People ask artists to give their work away too often. It’s undervalued in that way,” she says, adding most of the donations are made outright.
The event has grown from a grassroots fundraiser to an annual and well-known event in the span of three years.
“The whole ‘goat’ thing is something that makes it a memorable experience for people,” Moran says. “If you spend $100 on a piece of artwork, that’s five goats for somebody.”
And five goats can be the difference between a life of poverty, or a sense of empowerment, for the Maasai women.
“That empowerment is really encouraging. They feel like because they can make a difference in their community they have a voice now,” Moran says.
The micro-credit loan program established by Glass has now grown to $20,000, and the Kenyan women’s lives are becoming richer in more ways than one. During one of her last trips to Olkoroi, one of the Maasai women approached Glass to tell her just that.
“She said, ‘Men see that we have resources that belong to us now. And that gives us more power to speak.’”
Goat Money, a silent art auction, takes place at the Baron Gallery in Gastown this Sunday, June 1, from 1 to 5 p.m. Drinks and appetizers will be served.
