Guest posts and requested topics

If you’d like to write a guest post about the Chanceys, please comment here with an e-mail address and what topic you’d like to cover. Comments are screened, and no e-mail addresses will be shared. If you have a topic you’d like to see covered, comment here as well and let me know. I’d appreciate both! As a work-at-home small-business-owning mom, time can be short, and I won’t pretend to have tons of time because my child afraid to get off the blanket (blanket-training is an awful Quiverfull practice involving hitting babies with objects to teach them to not get off a small blanket so that they stay out of their parents’ way), so I’d especially love guest posts!

Inconsistencies about Jennie’s workers and their pay

On Jennie’s Etsy listings, which have since been removed along with her entire shop, she said,

Seamstresses have been paid at a retail rate for their work (which is almost 300% more than the minimum wage rules in Kenya require)

I only have that saved because I quoted it with a link in this blog’s first entry.  The links now go to an “uh-oh” page over on Etsy. For whatever reason, her shop has been closed.

The math was done using the highest minimum wage, and it’s been determined that at three times the highest minimum wage in Kenya, which is $80 (all currently un US dollars), so a total of $240 a month, she is still paying below a living wage.

Then in an e-mail she states,

The women do the sewing and charge me 100% for their labor.

Do these women work as her workers for a pay she determines, or are the truly independent, as she has stated, and she is billed at their rates?

On her Facebook page, she posted, on Sunday (either coincidentally, or because she was tipped off), a post explaining the guild, and this post comes with a big asterisk.*  One line she fed her sycophants is,

The average seamstress working in her own shop here expects to make about 200-300Kshs per day, which is $2.40-$3.60. Our ladies earn about $10 for the work they do on their part of a single dress (which could be two skirt seams or two sleeves, etc.)

This is the only time she states a firm amount the women receive.  But once again it sounds like they’re employees rather than seamstresses billing her their rates.  In fact, it sounds like a production line.  The women make one part of a dress?  Production line.  A great way to knock out many items for cheap.

There are 22 work days in a typical month.  Only February has exactly 4 weeks, 28 days.  The rest have 2 or 3 more days.  So at the best, these women are making $220 per month (all dollar amounts are US dollars), or, in a month where the days line up right, $230 (like how some months those paid bi-weekly get three paychecks). I wasn’t too far over in my earlier estimates. Well, Jennie would have us believe that she is doing great things for these widows.  However, according to the International Research Network on Business, Development and Society, the reasonable monthly income considered to be a living wage for an urban Kenyan family is $315.60.  So while the women are paid more than minimum wage, they are still not making a living wage.  They are still in incredible poverty while Jennie’s family sits well-fed and comfortable in a large, beautiful, secure home, and Jennie pockets money from their work.

There is somewhere else that she stated the workers are paid the retail cost a dress sells for in the village.  I am having difficulty locating that source, but will continue to see if I can locate it.  Even without it, we have three different pays mentioned and they’re already seamstresses who bill for their labor, are contractors who are paid, and are employees she pays.  The piece about them being paid the cost of a dress in their village would indicate they’re paid for piece wage (payment per item instead of for time). But she also mentioned a wage, and being paid to do just one part of a dress. Piece wage, per hour, per day, employees paid a wage, independent seamstresses who bill… Jennie has been all over the board on this issue.  

Regardless, just going by the one time she gives an amount they get, they’re paid less than a living wage in a poverty-stricken club in Kiberia, Kenya, while the Royal Chancey sit rich spending 27 days of worker pay on a dingle dinner for just three of them.

Back to that e-mail she states (bolding mine),

Now that our family lives in Kenya, we’re also reaching out here by helping Kenyans to succeed–particularly the ones who are often overlooked or marginalized in an “upwardly mobile” culture. The dress business is one of these endeavors. I purchase all the materials (fabrics, threads, buttons, zippers, etc.) and provide the pattern designs. The women do the sewing and charge me 100% for their labor. Our mission with these gals is twofold. First, we are helping them to set up a market here in Kenya to sell to Kenyans (and probably also the tourism trade). The other half involves me exporting the dresses back home to the States to sell through my website. The ladies make the same amount of money either way (and have no up-front costs for fabric, etc.), but I do have to add on to the price of the dresses in order to sell them back home, since all the export costs are mine (shipping, packaging, advertising, etc.). Those costs will (hopefully!) be covered by the retail sales back home.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.  The extent of advertising has been through her newsletters, which she e-mails out just to talk about what her family is up to, and posting on her own forum.  What expense is there?  Packaging is minute.  The shipping…  Well, Matt had listed on his Linked In profile, that he is president of East Africa Logistics, which just happens to be an export and shipping company.  Are we to believe his wife’s exports would be at full price?  And that he wouldn’t know a few strings to pull to lessen any potential fees?

Now you might notice that EAL isn’t listed in his Linked In profile.  It was there a few days ago when this fact was brought to my attention on a forum (it seems someone is watching that forum and alerted Matt).  But a Google search still shows it, along with one of his Blockade Runners business, which confirms that it’s not another Matt Chancey with businesses operating out of Kenya, which would be a very minute possibility anyway.

Jennie wants us to believe she’s not profiting.  Planned Parenthood is considered a non-profit, yet its top CEOs clear half a million in pay a year.  Their pay isn’t considered to be part of the profits.  Jennie, like any business owner, knows what it means to pay yourself your hourly rate.  Anything left after paying yourself for your time is profit.  Some sole proprietors consider anything over actual supplies to be their profit, as I do.  Some others only consider profit to be anything over their own hourly rate.  In neither case does this mean the one in charge doesn’t get any money.  Jennie admits she tacks on to the cost of the dresses for things such as advertising.  Since she has no costs associated with sending out e-mail newsletters or posting on her own forum, this can only mean she is taking money for her time.  Who will believe she’s willing to accept the same rate per hour for typing up a newsletter and making a post on her forum that her workers receive?

The big asterisk mentioned above: Jennie deleted all comments from the Facebook page that weren’t full of praise for her.  Here are the screen caps I got prior to deletion:

<img src="http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t450/thechanceys/Facebook%20edits/ScreenShot2012-05-08at53010PM.pngv

Old Spice and the Art of Manliness

In 2008 webzine Art of Manliness partnered with Old Spice to run a contest intended to be an annual contest, that has ended up becoming a one-time contest. People nominated men in their lives as the manliest. 10 finalists were chosen, and they ranged from a young rather working his tail off for his newborn’s support to a 9-11 first responder to a racist homophobic bigot.

You can read about the finalists and see the photos submitted here: Art of Manliness. A scroll down the images, including fathers with their children, a police officer with his wife, a man and his wife who has a prosthetic leg, and a few smiling, friendly faces. One stands out in a jarring way. It’s one I posted yesterday.

The very image of Imperialism.

Old Spice is a company that has prided itself on being inclusive of gays and others that are…less than desirable to Matt.

Now I could rehash what others have said so well, or I could link you to some well-written entries. I am going to do the latter.

First, read why a supporter supports Matt. Reasons include “he is so classy I’ve never seen him out of a waist coat”, to his wife running Ladies Against Feminism, a website that claims anything feminist is just plain wrong and puts the burden of men keeping their sexual urges squarely on the shoulders of women (basically “the rape victims is to blame”), to the non-reason that feminists (“and effeminate men”) hate him. Hmm, I wonder why feminists and effeminate men would hate someone who believes women belong barefoot and in the kitchen pumping out baby after baby and that effeminate men are hell-bound. Anyway, it’s appalling.

This Truth Wins Out article is the best article I’ve seen about Matt. I don’t think I could write a better one. There are links pricing his racism and homophobia. Greatful Dread also has an article with the same text, and I don’t know which posted first and which copied, so both are here.

The Gay Recluse posted an article as well.

She Takes on the World posted about how sad it is that this jerk was chosen as a winner when his beliefs (which wouldn’t matter quite so much if he hadn’t actually tried running for political office) include women should not be college educated or have hobbies outside the home, both important parts of the Quiverfull teaching. Hypocritically, his wife attended schools and even college and even stayed in the dorms. Their daughters, on the other hand, will not attend, and have been, and will continue to be, homeschooled. This will be a topic of another post.

Vision Forum put out a call to all its followers to vote for Matt, and as I recall, the reasons were to show the world a “true Christian” man and to not less “godlessness” win. More than three years later, and I can’t find this article. Google keeps bringing up other blogs. But with this force behind him, people being mobilized for his religion, it was going to be impossible for anyone else to win (though I did my best to rally up votes for 2nd-place Howie Farmer, hoping his 9-11 work would be enough to take down Matt, but a man putting his life on the line was no match for Vision Forum’s support for Matt and guilt of their followers). But at least a brief post by Doug Phillips for Vision Forum came up titled “Thank God for Real Men” (because first responders and police don’t count as real men…).

There are many more out there, but these three have enough, plus my daughter is starting to stir from her nap and I’m a mother who actually wants to spend time with her child doing things other than teaching her to grow up being a man’s doormat (if she grows up to marry a woman or no one at all, her daddy and I will support her). So I need to wrap this up.

Matt Chancey being chosen as a finalist has been a blight on Old Spice. Even though the company technically only sponsored the contest, their name, being a nationally-known name while the web-zine’s is not, is the one that has suffered worse.

Frankly, if Matt Chancey is who is considered to be the manliest of men, then I’m glad my husband, an accepting, hard-working, respectful, non-discriminatory person as pissed off as I am about Arizona cutting funding to Planned Parenthood to make sure money doesn’t accidentally indirectly support abortion even though it means cutting off all the other services, is apparently not a man. Frankly, no real confident man would be threatened by a woman having equality and a daughter having at least a high school education.

Missionaries exploiting 3rd world widows for goods to resell on Etsy.com

Jennie Chancey, owner of sensibility.com, has had a plan for several months to use the poor women she met on her missionary trip to Kenya to make clothing for her to sell. I get her newsletters, and they have been mentioning this for several months. The first one was last summer. I thought she was going to sell them on her website. But that wouldn’t matter here since reselling on your own website isn’t wrong, even if the point of a missionary trip isn’t to make the locals rely on you for pay.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/sensibility

There are some there.

Let’s take a look-see at the first dress posted. http://www.etsy.com/listing/99072672/blue-white-1950s-style-party-dress-retro

In 2011, my family started the Forever Grace Sewing Guild, which partners with Hosanna Revival Church in Nairobi’s Kibera slum to provide work for widows, single mothers, and other needy women. The ladies who work with Forever Grace receive free instruction in pattern cutting, sewing, and marketing. They are treated as independent contractors and are able to work from home on their own time schedules (no sweat shops!) at a living wage. *

Over the past year, we have been helping these ladies develop a line of clothing based upon my vintage-inspired pattern designs. Our first batch of dresses is complete, and I’m offering them here on Etsy as the “first fruits” of their labors!

…

* All garments have been produced under the oversight of Hosanna Revival Church and meet all export requirements for fabric and notions. Seamstresses have been paid at a retail rate for their work (which is almost 300% more than the minimum wage rules in Kenya require).

First off, she’s supposed to be there on missionary work, and instead she admits in the first sentence of the posting that her family started what she’s calling a guild, really a business, to hire those women to make clothing that she is going to sell. So those women are dependent on her to have a marketplace. Better not get on her bad side.

Second, there is a big problem in Kenya of inflation outstripping minimum wage more severely that the US (sometimes more than 10% in a single month), and just like in the US, minimum wags isn’t rising nearly as fast. We all know that in most areas of the US, two or even three times the minimum wage is needed to scrape by, sometimes more. We lived in a city where twice minimum wage was needed just to pay rent on a small place in the cheap part of town.  Kenya is so much worse off.

Third, the highest minimum wage anywhere in Kenya is just $80US a month, which is a fortune for most families, for full-time work of 52 hours per week (and this is only in three cities), which is so low that as of today, there are strikes and protests going on because that’s not enough for people to live on, yet this is the highest minimum wage in the entire country. In rural areas, the minimum wages are lower. Outside of those three cities, there are various minimum wages that take into account everything from a person’s sex to their age.  Worse still, in 2006, the living wage for the lowest ends was considered to be $250US per household, and it’s spiked since them. $250US needed in 2006 to live, $80US today being the highest minimum anywhere. And many employers pay the minimum because, just like in the US, if one person won’t work the job for so little, many others will.

Let’s presume Jennie is paying three times the largest cities’ minimum, so $240, since the number she gives is “almost 300% more” than the minimum laws (the laws are what allow for lower wages because you’re a young woman with few skills). Realistically there’s not a chance that the women in that village are subject to the highest minimum wage in the country, so using that number is EXTREMELY generous, but let’s just say.) The typical work week is 52 hours. $18 a week in wages, divided by 52 hours, about 35 cents per hour, so $1.05 is three times that.

At the ABSOLUTE BEST these women are making $1.05 per hour. AT THE ABSOLUTE BEST. And in reality, since they aren’t in those women aren’t skilled and are WOMEN, and they don’t live in the three cities with the “high” minimum wage, they’re going to be making even less than that.

Let’s take a look at something else she says.

I’m calling the dresses in this first batch our “training wheels.” While they really look fabulous, there are some areas that haven’t reached perfection. 😉 Some of them have size tags sewed in upside down. Some have a hodgepodge of seam finishes (from Serged edges to hemmed edges).

Flawed batches of things always sell for less. Let’s say someone spent 10 hours making that dress, and made $10.50, which, as has been concluded, is really higher than any of those women can expect earn since that’s based off of the country’s highest monthly minimum wage which only applies to three cities with laws that allow women who aren’t very skilled to be paid less, and Jennie said they get 300% of the minimum law allows them to be paid. Fabric is cheap in Kenya, and that’s according to a Kenyan woman I know who imports fabric from there to make her clothes because evens with shipping, it’s far less than buying cheap fabric here. Cheap fabric is only a couple bucks a yard here. So I will be VERY generous and say let’s presume that Jennie is spending $5 for the fabric for each dress, and $200 to ship back the “14 dresses, 12 necklaces, and 40 double Kangas in this batch” (in her newsletter). I’m basing that on UPS’s rates for the approximate weight you can expect those items to weight (I ship internationally a lot). Let’s divide it only among the dresses. $15 each for shipping to the US. So a total of about $30.50 per dress between labor, shipping, and fabric. I MUST STRESS that the wages I’m going by at the highest minimum wage and are only in three cities, and that even that minimum wage is less than a third of the 2006 living wage.

So at the LEAST, Jennie is pocketing $39.45 on that dress. Since only two of the 14 dresses were listed at $49.95 and the other 12 were priced at $69.95 (some have sold, but I saw with all 14 up), this means Jennie is making a personal profit of AT LEAST $513.30 on this batched of flawed dresses when she’s supposed to be there on missionary work. She’s clearing more than twice the 2006 living wage. This money is a drop in the bucket to her, but would make a world of difference to those women.

Jennie says those women are making a living wage and tries to make it sound like “almost 300%” above the minimum that applies to those women is a great sum of money. They’re not making a living wage. Even if she was paying “almost 300%” of the US minimum wage, she’d still be making a personal profit when she’s supposed to be doing missionary work, and she’d still be making those women rely on her.

Well, I guess we shouldn’t expect better from a woman who thought this was a great photo to submit to show her husband’s “manliness” but that just makes him look like a smug, rich white asshole (taken during one of his previous “missionary” trips):

and who has no shortage of time to make a dress to go play Titanic at their favorite restaurant (that I looked up and is considered to be quite upscale and expensive by the local standards) – of course her husband and oldest son couldn’t travel to Africa without tuxedos.
sensibility.com/blog/diary-of-a-titanic-dress-part-seven-the-big-reveal/ (face of her 15-year-old isn’t blurred on her site, but will be here).

The last two pictures were from a Titanic-sinking celebration the Chanceys and their eldest attended.  The cost per ticket was KSH 7800, or about $90US, more than a month’s wages for the majority of Kenyans.  The profits on the first batch of dresses pays for almost six of those tickets, and that doesn’t include the necklaces those women made.  $90 on a single meal per person is more than most Kenyans would even dare dream of spending on a meal, and more than most will ever have all at a single time.

I’ve got friends who do missionary work, and the photos they send aren’t of prissy parties and tales of how they’re using the locals as their personal workforce. Their stories are heart-breaking, and the money they have with them go to buying medical supplies the locals can’t afford, and they work hard building schools and homes. There’s no time to dress up and play, and certainly no training the locals to make money for the white people who swoop in and expect to be gods – because my friends spend their time helping, and participate in programs such as Heifer.org, which buys animals for people in poor areas and trains them to be SELF-SUFFICIENT without needing to rely on someone else selling their wares to Americans or to keep giving hand-outs. The goal is to make the people better off once the missionaries leave than they were before arrival, and to enable them to continue improving their lives. once Jennie leaves, those women will be screwed.

And since I participate in Sewing Hope, which trained women in Africa to sew and teaches them what they need to run businesses in their local communities so that they don’t need the constant presence of others, I am just so offended at what Jennie is doing. I can’t stand it, and I hate her with a violent passion. She is an absolutely disgusting human being taking advantage of those poor women. And I’m hoping that now that she’s involving Etsy and admits in the listings that those women are making everything that this will blow the top on her “missionary” work where she’s really using those women as her personal workforce to make a personal profit, which isn’t the point of missionary work.

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