The broom maker from Clejani

Cristian Ștefan is 62 years old. Everyone calls him Fane. He lives in Clejani, a village in Giurgiu county, southern Romania, and he makes brooms.

He has been making them since he was seventeen. His mother and father sat at the kitchen table tying straw, and he sat beside them, watching their fingers move. He liked the work, and he stayed with it.

Craft businesses like his are common across Roma communities in southern Romania and almost invisible to the formal economy: no registration, no invoices, no access to credit, no way into a supermarket's supply chain. REDI's work in Giurgiu and Teleorman starts exactly here — with the people who already have a trade, and the paperwork, pricing and market access they were never offered.