(272) Community development

 There is this couple who gave up good jobs to be blessings to minority tribes in the mountains. Raymond was a highly paid chartered accountant. Evelyn was a mover and shaker in trading shares, earning millions in a bull run.

Evelyn started a cottage industry sewing small items for sale. The latest batch includes cotton purses that come in four colours: purple, blue, green, and yellow. There were flowers embroidered in matching colours on the upper panel that is beige in shade. Many friends and relatives who visit Raymond and Evelyn would bring these light weight items back. A local mission organization would sell such handicraft alongside the books and audio bibles in churches..

Over the years, I have seen note pads with magnets, book marks, tiny shoes to be tied to hand phones, four different ethnic shoes in a wooden frame with magnet, ethnic shirts with magnet ... all lovely to behold. It is a non profit community project to benefit the marginalised minorities living in the hills. Each woman was given a micro loan and was given training to enable her to produce marketable items. With the small profit of items produced, they are able then to repay the micro loan in installments. Usually the first beneficiary of such a project are the children, they are then able to go to school as their mothers could pay whatever fee that they previously could not.

Behind each handicraft, there is a small piece of paper showing a tiny photo of the minority woman with her name and story. It could be she was a widow having a tough time raising six young children. Or she could be handicapped with a withered leg, that means she could not farm or rear pigs in a mountainous area.

The producers are living in an Asian country. The finished products are sold in a small scale in a South East Asian country. What I am wondering is: would a blog like mine be able to play a role in helping to widen the scope of this already successful project? Would you, my readers, be interested to see photos of the products with histories of the makers? Would you write to an e-mail address to order such gifts for your  friends? At the last count, readers come from twenty-six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Macedonia, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom and U.S. of America. Thank you for following this blog.

If your answers to these questions are yes, please make a comment below this post or e-mail to ramblingsofadyslexic@gmail.com.

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