Founded 7 years ago, by Fritha Mason, Secret Projects vision is a world where all women have the confidence and resources to make their own choices for themselves and their children. Working throughout 5 Indian states, Secret Projects empowers women through the making and selling of homewares. Fritha built up a global customer base by transferring her skills as a charity fundraiser to rewards based crowdfunding, using UK based Crowdfunder as a platform, who exist to support people who have an idea that might just change the world! After a series of very successful campaigns, Secret Projects now has over 3,000 customers.
As we enter our eighth year, we are now working with over 300 women from marginalised communities, with good sewing skills who make our charming and foldable Secret Products. Although we pay the women twice the minimum wage for the items they make, they have big dreams and don’t want handouts or to be beneficiaries. Simply put, they want to earn their own income and many dream of opening sewing units and taking the goods they make to market themselves. One of our Makers, Shylaja has managed to do just that and embodies why we do what we do. Read Shylaja’s story.
At the same time, homes all over the world are full of Secret Products from Secret Pillows through to our Secret Sari Dresses and to move forward, we decided that we needed to bring these 2 elements together and as a result, Secret Projects is now up for sale!
We have transformed Secret Projects into a Community Benefit Society, which means that people anywhere in the world can buy shares and invest in our vision. We are currently running our most challenging crowdfunding appeal to date, to sell these shares and raise £150,000 to expand our business to reach even more women and we are thrilled to be working with Crowdfunder once again. Crowdfunding is never easy. It’s high maintenance, high energy and needs constant input and attention, but we do have some expert guidance from the excellent team at Crowdfunder, who we are delighted to be working with once again We couldn’t be better supported! They have provided us with skilful coaching, as we developed our appeal and freely given ideas for marketing, promotion and contacts. Most importantly, Crowdfunder are always on hand as we go through our campaign to give us advice and encouragement. Knowing they are there for us makes life whilst crowdfunding so much easier – their energy and drive is infectious!
To learn more about Secret Projects vision and the full details of our appeal click HERE.
