At a time when Guyana’s petro fortune continues to focus attention on the opportunities that it offers to external onlookers seeking to take advantage of local investment opportunities, Guyanese continue to ‘parade’ those openings across the sectors, seeking to attract external buy-ins through investments in local undertakings believed to have the potential to access lucrative international markets. Not least among those local entrepreneurial ventures seeking to ‘catch’ the country’s investment ‘petro wave’ in an effort to hitch a ride to the wider international market is Eco Solutions, an enterprise that provides glimpses of the craft gift ‘bequeathed’ to many Guyanese.
The 54 Section C Turkeyen workshop named Eco Solutions from where creative ideas are transformed into finished products is a maze of hustle and bustle as skilled craftspeople fashion ‘eye-catching’ finished products out of an array of indigenous raw materials. The pieces ‘turned out’ by Eco Solutions creations pay as much attention to ‘finish’ as they do the decorative content created by the factory and the painstaking effort to provide the neatest assemblage possible. A glimpse at the finished pieces send messages of taste and class targeting what would secure them entry into even the most demanding markets.
Not unlike a number of other Guyanese who now take advantage of the oil-driven transformations in the country’s economic profile to push them in entrepreneurial directions, Ndibi Schwiers, ECO Solutions’ owner, had previously spent her working life in the public sector where, after twelve years as an Environmental Scientist, she cultivated an appreciation of the various linkages between creativity and the environment which led her to ‘a place’ where she wanted to combine the two to please the more critical eye.
The idea, Ndibi says, had come from “a voice” that urged her to combine her creative disposition with the resources at her disposal to create what she envisaged could be a sustainable business. The challenges, at the outset, included the assembling of a work force which, collectively, could ‘deliver both the craftsmanship and the imagination to help her deliver on her ambition.’ Eco Solutions, Ndibi says, was also conceptualized in the wake of the coming into being, in 2015, of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) that pursued global advocacy of ‘green’ practices in entrepreneurial endeavors.
The eventual conclusion of Ndibi’s contract with the Government of Guyana in 2020 afforded her the opportunity to redirect more time and attention for her preparatory pursuits associated with fashioning a business enterprise of her own. Thereafter, she ‘graduated’ into self-employment. The creation of ECO Solutions, she told the Stabroek Business, posed fewer problems than she had expected. What it did, however, was to set her challenges linked to ‘changing lanes.’ One of her earliest undertakings was to enroll for a course through which she could benefit from formal training in Business Management.
The challenge of infusing an environmental undertaking into the manufacturing of eco-friendly furniture sent Ndibi on a painstaking search for eco-friendly raw material. In the course of her exchange with the Stabroek Business, Ndibi insisted on sharing her ‘adventure’ with the Water Hyacinth. The Water Hyacinth, a floating aquatic plant native to South America, possessed of broad, thick, glossy, durable leaves, in effect, ‘ready- made’ pursuits in the creative sector. More than a year of testing and trials led Ndibi to the conclusion that the plant possessed the properties that made it adaptable to use in the manufacturing sector, not least exotic furniture and ornaments.
Confident in the properties of the plant to suit her creative purpose, she proceeded on a ‘harvesting’ exercise that involved the recruitment of several persons along the East Coast Highway to harvest, clean and dry ‘bundles’ of the plant prior to braiding it onto hardwood frames that provided the decorative ‘structure’ for her envisaged creations. The ‘experiment’ opened an astonishing array of creative opportunities. Among the inventory of finished products now produced by Eco Solutions are living room suites, lamp shades, bar stools, baskets, mirrors and dining sets. These, Ndibi believes, brings news dimensions in “taste and creativity” to contemporary homes.
