Meet Alicia Wallace of All Across Africa + KAZI in San Diego

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alicia Wallace.

Alicia, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
In college, I was working at a law firm but really had my sights set on making an impact in the world. I arranged weekly serve the homeless dinners and set up a fund to donate to causes that were relevant to our field. But it wasn’t enough. One night I created a bucket list and on it, was a line “Travel to Africa” – as if “Africa” was a specific enough place for a travel destination, it’s a whole continent! It was right below bucket list items #27, “Travel to Antarctica.”

A few months later I learned of a trip people from my church were taking, a medical mission to Sierra Leone and I couldn’t say no – I mean, it was on my bucket list after all. It was there, in the rural village of Makeni that I saw and learned things I could no longer forget. I saw men and women in extreme poverty, not by choice but by circumstance. I saw babies die in nurses arms on the way to the hospital for lack of very basic medical services and training. I came back to the US with a heavy heart and a commitment that I wasn’t going to ignore this problem or believe that someone else was actually going to solve it for me. I had to step in and help. I started exploring nonprofits and investment funds helping create opportunities for men and women in poverty. I was not only getting interviewed but interviewing each place, I applied on their vision, beliefs, and methods for helping the world’s poor.

I wasn’t seeing the method of development that I believed would change the world. I wanted economic empowerment where men and women were engaged and involved AND valued in the process. I didn’t want a donation or hand out model with pictures of poor kids driving wealthy men and women to pull out their wallets. I wanted willing and guiltless and active participant s in the process. It was somewhere in this unending search for the “right place” that I stumbled across a nonprofit led by Greg Stone, called Rwanda Partners. I had a lot of criticism about the model he was executing as well – a nonprofit model fundraising and creating “projects” in Rwanda as well as an artisan model. Somewhere in my second interview Greg and myself found ourselves debating about methods of development and I could see we both deeply cared for people, wanted them to be empowered to make their own decisions and change their lives and that we both were willing to see each other’s view. I quit my full-time career law firm job and joined his organization as a full-time volunteer. I worked as a director for three years and traveled to Rwanda, developing a sustainable model that no longer relied on donations, but on creating beautiful products and selling them in the market. I should note that it helped a little bit that our first customer was Costco.

Fast forward nine years and now we serve 3,600+ rural African artisans will full-time employment – men and women who are affected by drought, lack of formal employment and need income to access the rare medical and education institutions in their areas. Women are learning to manage their businesses, their finances and creating beautiful products that major retail across the globe value and covet. We’ve created this beautiful business that creates value for men and women in Africa and men and women who consume their goods.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have been many struggles and challenges along the way – and there continue to be on the journey ahead.

Some of our biggest challenges are matching supply and demand so that all artisans have full-time work. It’s a difficult business as retailers make last-minute decisions or change their minds or the market changes and things look different, but we have to work to have ways to build a full pipeline for them all year round.

One of our most trying times as a business was in 2014, Ebola was spreading in West Africa and the headlines in the US during the holiday season read “Ebola: All Across Africa”. We couldn’t have picked a worse name for our company. At our holiday pop up shops, people steered clear of our products for fear that our East African products (produced 2,000 miles away from the real crisis) could somehow contain ebola.

Our sales that season were a dismal 25% of previous seasons and we were left with a lot of product and had a lot of canceled meetings for the coming months as buyers were very wary to source products from Africa. In turn, we had to lay off half of our staff, move to a space that was half the rent and my business partner, Greg and myself forwent our salaries for a year and half. We buckled down in all the right places, met some amazing helpers along the way and came out stronger because of it.

Please tell us about All Across Africa + KAZI.
All Across Africa works with rural men and women to create jobs and alleviate poverty. We work to organize men and women into micro-businesses that allow them to learn leadership, finance and supply chain management. Our team of international designers creates products that allow the artisans to produce products with a global demand. I’m most proud that uneducated women in rural Africa (Rwanda, Uganda, and Ghana to be exact) are producing things that high-end retailers such as Barneys, Le Bon in Paris and many others have a strong demand for and supporting their families and pulling them out of poverty. It’s really amazing!

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I was fortunate enough to have a loving family and be only child until I was seven.

My childhood memories are filled with nightly family dinners, summers lakeside at a beautiful place called Chelan and surrounded with family and friends.

At seven, and ten, my two brothers entered the world and showed me that everything doesn’t revolve around me (an important life lesson I needed to learn!) and introduced me to my love for children – it’s extended into my desire for other men and women to be self-sufficient to care for their own families!

Contact Info:

• Address: 100 W 35th Street Suite G
  National City CA 91950
• Website: www.kazigoods.com
• Phone: 8583842630
• Email: info@allacrossafrica.org
• Instagram: @kazigoods
• Facebook: /kazigoods
• Twitter: kazigoods
• Yelp: allacrossafrica
• Other: www.allacrossafrica.org

Image Credit:
All Across Africa

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