(L-R) Wooden Spoon Project founders and sisters, Chelsea Dao and Tara Dao, display their spoons alongside satisfied customer, Nicole Carberry, at the Lafayette Art and Wine festival held in September.
Miramonte senior Tara Dao’s passion for artistry and community leadership took center stage at the annual Lafayette Art & Wine Festival in September. Dao, alongside her sister Chelsea Dao, manned a pop-up booth selling beautiful handmade wooden spoons, unassuming and simple in nature, to raise funds for Zambia’s Mukungule Community Nature Conservancy.
The Hand Carved Wooden Spoons Project is a collaborative effort of local Zambians, community leaders fighting for change and a family in Orinda, who have made giving back a pillar of their livelihoods.
With their mother, Chivy Sok, having worked in the international activism field for almost 30 years, the Dao sisters have grown up with social justice leaders from around the globe regularly gracing their homes for dinners and meetings.
In 2018, the family welcomed Hammerskjoeld “Hammer” Simwinga, a renowned Zambian activist and pioneer of conservation efforts, who piqued Tara’s interest in supporting conservation work in his country.
“Throughout the night, I was hearing stories about the work they’re doing, and a couple of years later, my mom showed me a picture of the wooden spoons they’d been making,” said Tara. “When I saw them my immediate reaction, after hearing they were selling for only a one dollar equivalent was, ‘Oh, I could probably sell them for $15 or $30 here.’”
She got to work, reaching out to Simwinga to establish a line of communication, becoming the Bay Area contact for the Conservancy. As Zambia’s first community-led nature conservancy, it has several local arts-based fundraising initiatives to support itself, including the sale of these spoons.
Tara arranged for the villagers to send a shipment of the spoons, and upon arrival, realized there was an issue. The spoons, which are hand-carved from wooden logs arrived in a rather raw state, with splinters and other small imperfections.
Determined to sell a smooth, beautiful and profitable product, the family spent countless hours sanding and polishing the spoons with coconut oil so they would be ready for sale.
Tara explained why they spent significant time perfecting the spoons.
“I think art is such a major part of a community and of a culture and I want to be a part of, you know, encouraging art and encouraging that craftsmanship, to develop in this community and ours too,” she said.
Fortunately for Tara, the annual Lafayette Art & Wine Festival was the perfect opportunity to begin selling the spoons and to combine her passion for community art in both the Bay Area and from the Zambian villagers.
The Dao’s set-up their booth through the Girls Crushing It Pop-Up program, a non-profit organization which provides entrepreneurial experiences for young girls to boost their skills and confidence in the business world.
They pitched the wooden spoons project to the organization’s founder, Roxanne Christophe, of Orinda, who loved the idea and helped the girls set-up the tent where the Dao sisters raised $300.
“I want to see this as something that will continue to expand,” said Tara. “My goal is to bring this initiative online so we can have a greater audience outreach and hopefully continue to raise money to support this cause.”
For more information about the project, visit www.mukunguleconservancy.weebly.com.
