Dutch designer Pepe Heykoop has just launched a range of leather lampshades made of soft lambskin, in a shape that harks back to the forms of old industrial lamps.

Lightweight, foldable, and easy to transport, the lampshades come in two shapes: ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ and have been manufactured using only leather from skins that are a byproduct and tanned with as many natural materials as possible.

But there's a little more to this launch than just another new product, because the lampshades are handmade in a production process that Pepe has set up himself in Mumbai, India, with the aim of providing jobs to as many underprivileged people in the process as possible.

Pepe organised this with the Tiny Miracles Foundation, a charitable organisation set up by his cousin. The foundation works mainly with young girls living in the red light area in Mumbai.

Tiny Miracles has identified young girls at risk in this area who they support with private English education in an effort to give them another option for work, rather than being forced into prostitution by poverty. At the same time, the foundation provides their unemployed mothers with work, enabling them to substantially increase household income.

Part of the profits of the products made by the mothers are donated to the foundation to be allocated towards education, so the objective is to create a circle: to provide enough work to the mothers so that the school fees for all their daughters can be indirectly paid by their working mothers through the Tiny Miracles Foundation.

The foundation also provides for a host of other educative sessions including health awareness, HIV prevention, and vocational courses.

With Heykoop's designs being fabricated in this way, it offers an income, and hopefully a change of destiny for many young girls living in poverty.