Quality furniture from the workshop of SOS Children’s Village in Buruburu.
Masters of their craft The SOS Children’s Village produces refined furniture makers
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By Jan Vandenabeele
n our quest for outstanding and successful forest products-based businesses, Miti visited an unlikely place, namely the SOS Children’s Villages, a non-governmental organisation (NGO). Unlikely, because you would not expect an NGO to be involved in business activities, nor a children’s village to engage in furniture making. But it turns out that there is a link, although indirectly, and it is educational. SOS Children’s Villages started in 1949 in Austria to offer homes to the many children orphaned by the Second World War. From Austria, the children’s welfare institution spread its wings to 132 countries. Currently, 70,000 children are cared for in 450 SOS Children’s Villages. Primary, secondary and technical schools as well as medical facilities were built to cater for the children. In Nairobi, an SOS Children’s Village was set up in 1972, complemented by a Vocational Training Centre (VTC) in 1986. Woodwork, metalwork, fashion and design, food and beverage and electrical engineering are taught in the VTC in a three-year programme for Standard 8 leavers (1415-year-olds). SOS looked for qualified teachers for the different subjects. Fritz Bachlechner, an Austrian, volunteered to teach woodwork. Thus, two years after the setting-up of the VTC, Mr Bachlechner, or Fritz, as everyone calls him, started working in Buruburu, sharing his expert knowledge on carpentry and furniture making. Indeed, Fritz is an accomplished wood worker, a perfectionist who attaches great importance to detail and the finish of the products. He was successful in his teaching job, as gradually his job description extended into training the teachers and, by 1992, he assumed the management of the “production unit” or workshop.
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Set up as an autonomous entity in 1989, the unit’s objective is to further the skills of the young apprentices after leaving the school. This means that the budding furniture makers also receive training in entrepreneurship, preparing them for life “in the open” (or “in the wild”). Even so, they are only called “craftsmen” after a subsequent apprenticeship of one to two years with an established industry. Such apprenticeships are not difficult to come by, as industries are eager to get well-trained woodworkers. The production unit has established a reputation of excellence, and its graduates find jobs easily. The graduates can also set out on their own, create a business and become self-employed. The workshop currently employs 25 people, of whom 18-20 are permanent, and the rest casuals, mostly students who use their wages to pay their school fees. Another reason for establishing a production unit was that SOS needed furniture for its expanding operations. So the unit has made furniture for the new Children’s Villages in Eldoret, Mombasa, Meru and Kisumu, as well as at Kakiiri outside Kampala, Entebbe, Gulu and Fort Portal in Uganda as well as Arusha, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar in Tanzania. Fritz, being passionate about woodwork, always pushes his students towards high quality standards. Apart from good and adapted machinery (saws, sanders, planers), and a stock of dry wood, this means paying special attention to detail and finishes. The woodworkers at the SOS VTC use joints and glue, instead of nails, to join pieces of wood together, a practice that makes all the difference to the quality of the furniture. In fact, this is only one of the many aspects that is standard fare in the woodworking classes of the VTC. Logically, the quality of the finishes is reflected in a higher price for the finished product. This could
be seen as a handicap in a highly competitive environment, but the centre has no problem finding clients. In fact, it has to turn down orders, as the first priority is to meet the needs of the Children’s Villages. The wood is air-dried in a shed, where it is properly stacked to allow free circulation of air, and the shed is well stocked. Obviously, this is a serious investment but one can look at it as a savings account, where the capital accrues interest, as the dried timber is far more valuable than fresh one. In fact, this is better than a savings account, as it is protected from the vagaries of the banking system, with its recurrent crashes and crisis, not to mention banking costs and fees. The timber stays in the shed for one to two years, depending on its thickness and the tree species. The centre uses mukanga (Aningeria altissima), a hard wood from around Kakamega and Eldoret, mahogany (Khaya spp or Entandrophragma spp) and mvule (Milicia excelsa) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Purchase prices for these DRC woods are respectively Ksh 105 and Ksh 115 per board foot. The centre does not use local pine, as it is difficult to find, but wood conglomerates as block board are used, depending on the nature of the work. Since its beginnings, approximately 1,200 students have gone through the school Some 200 to 240 of these studied woodworking. Fritz estimates that about a quarter of the graduates have the capacity to become entrepreneurs. And indeed, some of those have their own workshops (See article in the next Issue of Miti) The Vocational Training Centre’s reputation for quality is well deserved, and is most likely superior to government schools. Its running costs are not exorbitant, and are partly (40-45 per cent) covered by the school fees, while the rest is subsidised by the SOS Children’s Villages. The school fees vary according to the course. For instance, the woodworking and fashion and design courses cost Ksh 30,000 and Ksh 40,000 respectively, per year. Currently, there are 170 students in the centre, of which 10 to 15 are children from SOS. The writer is the Executive Director, Better Globe Forestry Ltd
Miti July-September 2010