FutureLab Winner_HAPACOOP

Sharing our idea of HAPACOOP with the audience.

Our initiative HAPACOOP won the Impact Award at the Oikos FutureLab, in St.Gallen.

Our initiative HAPACOOP [Hand Papermaking Cooperative] is a co-op of individuals with varied disabilities. Such as physically challenged, hearing impairment, visual impairment and mentally challenged. Here the individuals produce paper pulp bricks, small size handmade paper from banana fibres and products from it. The main focus of the project is motivation, training, information dissemination; technical assistance and providing a livelihood vocation to distinctly enabled individuals. We find it highly demeaning to gain leverage from someone’s disabilities even for the benefit of the disabled, which is why we make the most sincere recommendation that the products made at HAPACOOP should not be marketed as products made by disabled individuals. It is contradictory to conventional norms of marketing and commerce. Often, their disability is looked at as the products unique selling point. We are convinced that this is an act of moral degradation. Their limitation gives them the patience and placidity required for a meditative activity like hand papermaking. Therefore let us work in a way, which would instil confidence and dignity in them. For it is our task to suggest them; a way on which they would tread with pride.