When Elaine Bellezza decided to leave Mali after six years, she wanted to give the business she'd created in Bamako, the nation's capital, to her African employees. Many of her colleagues and clients said she was crazy.

"Both Africans and people in the international community said the store wouldn't last six months," Bellezza says, "but I was determined to do it anyway."

She informed her young manager, Fatima Bouaré, and the other four employees that she didn't want any money for the shop, only their pledge to keep it going. She'd spent four years training them in producing crafts and in running a business, and she was confident they could continue.

Three years later, Mali Chic is still one of the most popular stores in Bamako, selling furniture, fabrics, sculpture, handbags, napkins and decorative items, many of which were designed by Bellezza and produced by local artisans.

Mali wasn't her first experience in Africa. "I went and joined the Peace Corps at age 40," Bellezza explains. "I'd been an artist in the San Francisco Bay area and I decided I wanted to do something that would have an impact on the world." She was assigned to teach English in northern Cameroon, but the Peace Corps director of Cameroon required every volunteer to have an extra project as well.

Bellezza worked on developing a craft-centered tourism project. The people who lived in the village had ceased making crafts. So she had to help them create products as well as find a market. In the first year, they hosted 40 visits by international tour groups. In addition, she refurbished a building, turning it into a local craft gallery and museum.

Bellezza is based in Santa Fe, where she works as a design consultant with West African nations and with other countries, including Jordan, to help local artists and craftspeople bring their products to market.

She sees her endeavor as helping the economy of these very poor nations "one artisan at a time."

In the future, she may turn her talents to Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. She's scheduled to offer product-design workshops in conjunction with Creative Santa Fe in the fall. Dena Aquilena, director of Creative Santa Fe, says the workshop will be open to any kind of local craftsperson — leather, wood, jeweler, potter, etc.

"It's for talented folks whose designs may need a little boost to become more upscale and ready to market," says Aquilena. She adds, "We chose Elaine because she's had so much success in this field and she's fun to work with."

In designing new products, Bellezza likes to look through the market for inexpensive materials, then figure out how to use them in innovative ways. An example she points to is broom straw.

"There are great weavers in Africa. By suggesting they try weaving broom straw, we created very attractive table runners, lamp shades and wall hangings," she says.

Other materials she's experimented with include recycled wire and making high-end furniture from old tents.

Bellezza has been very successful in marketing these products both in Europe and through dealers in the United States. She sells a limited number of items, by appointment, from her home in Santa Fe.

In addition, last year she helped negotiate a deal between Hallmark and her former business and Malian craftsmen. Hallmark wanted 60,000 gift bags made of the traditional hand-dyed mud cloth called bogolon cloth. "Hallmark got their entire shipment of bags on time," Bellezza says with pride. The craftspeople also completed an order for Costco.

Africans are some of the hardest-working people in the world, she says, and they have to be to survive. Bellezza hates for people to think of Africa only in terms of problems: poverty, AIDS, civil war, illiteracy.

"Africa is filled with vibrant, hardworking individuals," she says, "who possess a keen sense of aesthetics and a wonderful spirit of open-heartedness. That's the Africa I know."