ARC-USA

ARC-USA has spent the past two years providing materials to refugee families to create products to sell to the local community at fairs and online. We have also worked alongside local universities and businesses to promote these products that have been created by refugee families. ARC-USA’s goal, if this grant opportunity is realized, is to create healthy and productive families through entry-level employment opportunities, designed to utilize their creative skills and their initiative. By establishing an e-commerce alternative to the current “brick and mortar” option, ARC-USA seeks to provide these families an additional avenue to sell their products. In doing this, ARC-USA hopes to provide a “hand up” versus a “hand out”. We are requesting funding to conduct a study to determine the cost and feasibility of website creation and marketing for these refugee families.

Our target audience would be current and potential buyers of handmade crafts. Our user group would be the artisans within the refugee community. There are over 70 refugee families in the greater Knoxville area.
We will be working with BRIDGE and KIN to contact and engage with these local artisans. The gauge of success would be the number of families that would begin to rely on income from these sales vs. government assistance as well as the sales revenue itself.
This effort will be sustained by local donations initially and, ultimately, increasing sales revenues from the site.