Dick Adams: Receives Harambee’s “Matt Essieh Social Entrepreneur Award”

The son of missionary parents who spent some of his growing up years in India, Dick Adams did his undergraduate work at a small Baptist college in Michigan. The impact of the years he spent in India was strong and he found his way to Duke University he earned and Masters and then a Doctorate in Sociology with specialization in South Asia.  As a professor of Sociology at Lewis and Clark College Dick led study abroad trips to India for several years.

In the 90’s he decided he wanted to learn more about Africa and the gender issues at play there.  At the suggestions of colleagues at Global Exchange, he selected Zimbabwe as his country of focus where he went on sabbatical in 1992. He took his first group of Lewis and Clark students to Zimbabwe in 1994.  On a second trip in 1997 he went to Weya where he first met the women artists who were on day to become the focus of his life’s work.  On a second trip in 1999, the women (who had been trained by a German volunteer a few years earlier) asked for his help in finding an outlet for their art in America.  Dick recognized that creating a revenue source for women would ensure that the benefits accrued to the whole family, and especially the children. He saw the in the woman artists of Weya were the actualization of the social gender theories he had taught in the abstract.  And so began the transformation of an academic into a social entrepreneur and the creation of the Zimbabwe Artists Project – ZAP! 

In 2000, after attempting to juggle his professorial duties with the demands of his social enterprise, Dick left Lewis and Clark to devote himself fulltime to ZAP. The Zimbabwe Artists Project involves over 160 artists annually with 30 new artists practicing artists in training.  In a country where astronomical inflation makes the purchase of a loaf of bread a luxury, the women artists of Weya receive a full value for their art and their families are among the few able to provide for their families basic needs, and schooling for their children.  In the Zimbabwe Artists Project exemplifies the best in social entrepreneurship and the spirit of respectful connection between people that is the essence of Matt Essieh in whose name this award is given.  ZAP is truly the exchange of value between the people of African and people of the Pacific Northwest.  It is an honor and privilege to announce that Dick Adams received Harambee’s first Matt Essieh Social Entrepreneur Award.