Being Silent to be Heard.

Photo Credit: The Malala Fund

This is a guest post written by Kristina Shands.

Yesterday, April 17th, was We Are Silent Day when young people around the world went silent for 24 hours for the millions

of girls around the world facing poverty, exploitation and the denial of their right to education.

Organized by the Malala Fund and social activist charity Free The Children, We Are Silent’s goal was to raise the plight of

children who are suffering and who are not heard.

While you may have missed We Are Silent Day, there are still several actions you can take right now to help women around the world.

1. Volunteer

You don’t have to have a ton of time to make a big difference. Check out the volunteer opportunities listed on Half the Sky Movement:

http://www.halftheskymovement.org/pages/volunteer

You can also volunteer virtually through the United Nation’s Online Volunteering Program: https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/vol/index.html

Another great volunteer opportunity is the Amnesty International Write for Rights Campaign: http://www.amnestyusa.org/writeforrights/

 

2. Donate

If you aren’t able to volunteer your time, or even if you do volunteer, you can always donate money to your favorite charity. If you are concerned

about the financial stability or responsibility of a nonprofit, then check out GuideStar for more information about thousands of organizations.

3. Advocate

One of the most powerful actions you can take is to advocate for your favorite cause.

Speak out by contacting your elected officials and letting them know that you want them to address your concerns and support your cause.

Engage with your community, co-workers, family and friends by holding house parties or informal gatherings where you share information on your cause and provide ways for them to take action.

Raise awareness for your cause by utilizing your social media connections to educate people and give them a chance to make a difference.

4. Buy for Good

 

Commit to purchasing from businesses that give back, like Buy the Change.

 

Here is a great list of companies that support women and girls worldwide: http://www.halftheskymovement.org/pages/buy-for-good

Any action you take - no matter how big or how small - will make an incredible difference. Remember this...

“NEVER DOUBT THAT A SMALL GROUP OF THOUGHTFUL, COMMITTED CITIZENS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD; INDEED, IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT EVER HAS.” ~MARGARET MEAD

NAMASTE

 

 

I recently bought this handmade ceramic piece from a cute local gift shop.

The growing popularity of yoga has helped to bring “Namaste” into our mainstream culture.

There are many interpretations of the word, but many yogis and instructors have a common description that Namaste means “the light in me honors the light in you”. While in India we learned that it’s also the customary courteous and respectful greeting to begin with (and often to end with) when meeting friends, family, or strangers. 

Why am I telling you this? Well, coincidences are cool and worth sharing, but simply put: I want to make a connection here and share a few observations about our culture and theirs. It’s not profound, by any means, but it is significant. 

Because of the context and meaning that I had for Namaste before we left, it was interesting to use it to greet the people I met each day. I don’t often get to exercise the ever-so deliberate practice of pressing my palms together at my heart, bowing my head slightly towards another, and to say such a significant word with such a powerful meaning. I essentially said “the good in me sees the good in you” to every person I met the 10 days we were in India. It was such a moving experience.It brought me to such a place of mindfulness and being in the moment. I felt it was a very “centering” experience. Now, magine if we practiced such mindfulness and such a show of respect every time we

greeted someone here. Somehow, our “hello and a handshake” just doesn’t measure up.

Now it’s time for some real talk it also called awareness to undercover judgments or criticisms that I found were imbedded in my day-to-day thinking. Instead of “the good in me sees the good in you”, I found I have been coming from a place of “the not-good-enough in me sees the not-good-enough in you”. Whoa. I had no awareness that this is where I had been coming from until I was guided to do it differently. I have always heard that we can’t love or understand others until we love and understand ourselves. That hits home more now than it ever has. We are human. We are always changing and our

capacity for love and understanding grows more every day.

That’s an experience worth sharing. 

Respect and mindfulness are key, foundational themes in our business. They are integral pieces of fair trade principles, and they are important to our supporters and humanity at large.

Thank you for your practice in mindfulness and for “Being The Change”.

Namaste,

Shanan

20 Years Without A Country

Over 200,000 members of the Karen Tribe in Burma (Myanmar) have been displaced due to political turmoil and persecution. As many as 160,000 of them live in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. The Karen are not Burmese, they were there long before Burma existed. They aren't Thai, even though many residents of the camps were born in Thailand. In the 20 years the camps have existed a whole generation of children have grown up there and are starting to have children of their own. Two generations of people who have never stepped foot in their homeland, yet are not free to move about the country where they live. One of the largest of the camps is MaeLa, home to about 50,000 people. In January we were able to visit the MaeLa with staff members from Women's Education for Development and Empowerment (WEAVE), an NGO (non government charity organization) Buy The Change works with in northern Thailand.

We were required to submit our information to the Thai government for a special letter of permission to enter the refugee camp zone. After taking a 5 hour car ride from Chiang Mai, our home base in northern Thailand, to the small town of MaeSod, we met with the staff of WEAVE and visited their showroom which is filled with products made by women in the camps. WEAVE is dedicated to assisting refugee women by giving them training in business building and helping them find worldwide markets for their handmade goods. We were able to see many new products and placed a large order for our Spring/Summer inventory. Maybe sometime soon I will tell you about the northern Thailand rest stop toilets and roadside food we experienced on our 5 hour drive north. We weren't doing the driving in case you were wondering. Even I, who loves an adventure, would not take off in a car through the mountains of Thailand without a guide.

The next morning, after passing through 4 or 5 police check points, we entered MaeLa camp. The camp is a virtual city in itself with homes, stores, restaurants, schools and offices. There are many NGOs with a presence in the camp focused on assisting the refugees with everything from education to relocation. We saw a setup of a typical American kitchen and bathroom used to prepare people who will be relocating to the United States. Can you imagine having never left MaeLa camp, where there is no running water, plumbing or electricity in your home, getting on a plane and being plopped down in a city in the US. Talk about culture shock. At the WEAVE tent we met Newah, a 20 year old mother of 3 who spoke a small amount of english, she makes her living doing embroidery for WEAVE. She had gotten word that she was approved for relocation to the US and will be living in Kentucky. Of course we gave her all of our contact information and expressed several times that we would be glad to help her in any way we can after she arrives. Newah gave us a tour of her home which is made of bamboo slats and sits up on stilts to be above the water that rushes through the camp during the rainy season. There was a stack of mats that they roll out to sleep on at night.

Because of the bamboo construction of almost all the buildings in the camp, fires are a common occurrence. When a fire starts it rages through many buildings quickly. It is so sad to think of people who have been displaced from their country, lost everything, watched family members be killed, lived in the forest moving daily to avoid Burmese solders and walked hundreds of miles to get to the relative safety of the camps losing everything again. You can see from the photo they do not have much. A fire had raged through an area of MaeLa shortly before our visit and we were able to see the rebuilding taking place. This is a typical street in the camp so you can see how a fire would be very difficult to stop.

Everyone who knows me or follows Buy The Change knows how much I love kids and enjoy taking photos of kids on our artisan visits. The good news at MaeLa is that all the kids go to school. The bad new, for me anyway, was the kids were in school during the time of our visit so I didn't get the chance to take any photos. We passed this group of little ones while walking from the site of the fire.

At the WEAVE tent we watched the women sewing, on foot powered sewing machines, and weaving on back strap looms. It is a fascinating and time intensive process, from setting up the loom to weaving the scarves and shawls one thread at a time. They asked if we wanted to take a try and we said no, for fear of messing up a project it takes 3 days to finish, without having to fix the mistakes of visiting Americans. Buy The Change sells scarves and shawls made by these women and we have only a few left in stock. You can see a couple of colors on the website here:http://www.buythechangeusa.org/scarves. We also have a couple each of khaki and peach left in the show inventory. Message us if you are interested in any of those. Each purchase will enable us to order more products from these wonderful women and keep them working. The blue in the photo is sold out, sorry.

Thank you so much for joining us on this journey of creating positive change for women around the world. Together we are changing lives one bag, blanket, scarf and piece of jewelry at a time.

I leave you with one of my favorite photos from MaeLa camp.

In Gratitude,

Kari

From Genocide to Peace

The third country Shanan and I visited on our artisan tour in Asia was Cambodia. The people of Cambodia have endured a great deal in a span of time shorter than my lifetime. Here is a very brief history; after the Vietnam War spread to Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge regime took power. What followed was years of devastation, mass killings, torture and fear. From 1975 to 1979, led by the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, there was a reign of terror in this small country. In 4 years, nearly 2 million Cambodians were murdered. Under the government that followed a full pardon was given to all members of the Khmer Rouge for the genocide and atrocities they had committed, this was a slap in the face to the surviving Cambodian People. In 1993, a mere 20 years ago, peace came to Cambodia. Since then, the country has struggled to find growth and prosperity while surrounded by the remnants of war, the rule of a dictator and a communist government. The endless list of challenges they still face include land mines, extreme poverty, lack of infrastructure, lack of jobs and a population left deeply wounded both physically and psychologically.

We didn’t know what to expect as we headed for Phnom Penh on the last leg of our tour. Our reading told us Cambodia is a place you will fall in love with or feel completely overwhelmed by. We settled in, after some hotel switching drama, and were ready to find out which side of the love/hate relationship we would develop with the Kingdom of Cambodia. We fell in love! Cambodia is chaos with seemingly no traffic rules, huge SUVs, whole families on scooters, hundreds of tuk tuks pulled by motorcycles and bicycles all weaving in and out, and somehow not running in to each other. Cambodia is beautiful with temples and bright orange clad monks everywhere you look. Cambodia is joyful and filled with smiles. The Cambodian people amazingly find a way to include kindness and laughter in each day.

Buy The Change works with a non-profit called Craftworks Cambodia which was founded to give disabled Cambodians access to a market for their handmade goods. We aren’t talking about arts and crafts here, these people are highly skilled sewers, weavers and jewelry makers. Craftworks Cambodia works with dozens of independent crafts people around the city and in surrounding villages. Sapbay, the founder and director of Craftworks Cambodia who was once a refugee himself, was kind enough to introduce us to many of them.

We visited a woman living with HIV/Aids. Her husband died of AIDS several years ago. She earns enough money with her sewing and beading to support herself and her daughter who is now attending university. Her daughter was home that day helping her mother add beading to an order of blouses. 

We visited the workshop of Srey Kimsean and Srey Mach . Kimsean caught polio as a child and wears a brace on her damaged leg, Mach lost her leg in a land mine explosion many years ago.  These two women are the creators of our popular Elephant Bags and our new Recycled Feed Bag IPhone cases. They are challenged daily with the fact that their workshop is on the second floor up a very steep flight of stairs. This may slow them down a bit but it certainly never stops them.

Srey Oun , we have written about her story in previous blog posts, was the victim of an acid attack during a dispute with a neighbor 14 years ago and was left severely disfigured and blind. She supports her elderly mother and young daughter with the income she earns crocheting bags for Buy The Change and other fair trade companies. She keeps her face covered but showed it to us and it was difficult not to react when seeing the pain she has endured.

Along with her husband and several apprentices, this wonderful mother creates the Recycled Bombshell Jewelry we are so excited to add to our inventory for Spring. He was raised in an orphanage and she was born in a refugee camp, together they have come so far. We had to rethink our philosophy concerning selling items made exclusively by women. This couple works together, side by side, every day. They are raising two chldren and working very hard to create a better life for them. It didn’t seem right to exclude them and these great products because she has a husband to share her life and workload with. We learned that empowering whole families is empowering women. 

Hopefully, this short introduction to a few of our artisans in Cambodia will help you understand how important and life changing your purchases are to real people working hard every day to create better lives for themselves and their children.

As always, Thank you so much for joining us on this journey. Together we are changing lives one bag, blanket and piece of jewelry at a time.

In Gratitude,

Kari

First Encounters...

Submitted by Buy The Change on Mon, 02/17/2014 - 22:00

There is a house in a quiet village in India where women meet on average once per week. They gather to sort fabrics, quilt, patch, stitch, sew and most importantly, for fellowship. Some women live nearby, and some walk a mile or more to go there. They are a spirited bunch led by a spirited woman named Sushmita. At this house, with these women, we had our first face-to-face visit with our artisans. 

I struggle to describe those first moments. Everyone was excited, and I’d say we all were acting uncomfortably proper. It was like we all were on our best behavior. It seemed that until we drank some tea and ate a bit of food all together did we all really settle in. Then, from there on out we were like old familiar friends meeting for the first time after ages had passed. They sat and quilted as we exchanged stories and talked business.

The women in this cooperative are very entrepreneurial! They showed us samples and prototypes of designs they had created. They were proud (and rightly so!) of their designs and creations. (That’s Sushmita on the left in the orange shirt!) It was remarkable to see them so engaged in the process and to genuinely be enjoying themselves in their work. I do believe that creation is one of the healing arts.

They are currently working on an order for us and it will include some brand-new products. Check out the handcrafted sari-bead jewelry below. These are pictures of the prototypes. The finished products are a little different, but you get the idea. We posted them on our Facebook pageand got some good feedback that was used in the final design!

Over the next couple of months we’ll be receiving lots of new products that we found during our adventure in Southeast Asia last month. Stay tuned to the blog and sign up for our newsletter for more stories from our trip and new product announcements.

Have a question for us? Is there a topic you’d like to hear more about? Comment on the blog or email me at shanan@buythechangeusa.org and let me know!

In Gratitude,

Shanan Bunzendahl

5 Things I Learned During My Month In Asia

Submitted by Buy The Change on Wed, 01/29/2014 - 08:07

Shanan and I just returned from an absolutely life changing month traveling in Asia, meeting women artisans who create beautiful, handmade products for Buy The Change. We also spent time with many of the amazing, caring people who work for cooperatives and non-profits (NGOs) helping women get their products to us and to you. We had hoped to be blogging while we were on the road but unfortunately discovered we could not access our contact lists on the mobile devices we had with us. Many of you were following along via Facebook and Instagram. We sooo loved reading your comments and words of encouragement. We will be writing about our experiences for weeks to come and will try to find ways to convey to you how important your purchases are for the women we met in India, Thailand and Cambodia.  Let's start with this:

1.  There Is No Limit To The Strength of The Human Spirit... We visited families in rural areas and women in the slums in Kolkata, India. We traveled to the Thailand/Myanmar border to visit women of the Karen Tribe living in the MaeLa refugee camp. We met numerous, home based, women producers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia including a polio survivor, a land mine victim, a woman living with HIV/AIDS and a woman blinded in an acid attack. They all welcomed us into their homes and workshops with such warmth and kindness. It was humbling each and every time. Clearly, they love their children and take pride in their homes and work. To say life is not easy would be a gross understatement, life for these women is hard, every single day.

2.  The Little Things That Are Annoying You Are NOT Important... From central heating and cooling to washing machines and tumble dryers, refrigerators, electric appliances, hot running water, clean tap water on demand, indoor toilets, traffic laws, an unlimited food supply and private bedrooms, we are living with more ease and convenience than seems possible. In the Mullahati slum in Kolkata there are two water pipes for 3000 families. The water runs for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. If you want water, which is not safe to drink, take a bucket and get in line. None of the homes we visited had indoor plumbing. In the majority of homes the entire family lives and sleeps in the same room which contains one bed and no other furniture. Almost all of the sewn products we sell were made on sewing machines that are foot powered. We live like royalty and have mostly forgotten how easy we have it. What was it that got on your nerves today?  What ruined your day because it caused you extra work or inconvenience?  What in the heck do we do with all the time we gain by having automated everything?  

3.  Poverty Forces People to Make VERY Difficult Decisions...  I was so ready to stand in judgment of anyone and everyone who participates in the trafficking of girls. As always, there is more to the story. Often traffickers visit villages with stories of jobs for girls in the city or next village. More often than not, those "jobs" are in brothels. Do the parents really believe the story or does extreme poverty and the idea of one less person to feed make them want to believe it? Even more horrific is the idea that the cash value of a girl is a potential survival plan for a family living in extreme poverty. Many times the trafficking of girls in Asia is a survival based, economic decision for a family. Consider this; if a family does not have the resources to house, feed and educate all of their children, the parents have to decide who will be fed and educated. If their son will stay with them and eventually bring his wife to help take care of them in old age, and their daughter will leave them to go live with the family of her husband after they pay a dowry for his family to take her, it makes sense to me that they would be more focused on their son?  I don't like it but it helps me understand the scope of this issue on a deeper level.  If there is enough money, girls are MUCH more likely to stay at home and go to school.

4.  Handmade Really Means Handmade...  Everything you buy from Buy The Change is handmade stitch by stitch, thread by thread. Watching the Karen women set up their weaving looms and women in India hand stitching and quilting sari blankets was a learning experience. I kept thinking "that takes so long". Yes, it takes a LONG time to weave a shawl one thread at a time or to create a piece of jewelry out of a bomb casing that was lying in a river bed for 30 years. Purchasing fair trade items costs a little more but we can all feel good in the idea that a woman was really paid for 3 days work for a piece that took 3 days to make.  

5.  We Each Have The Ability To Be A Force For Good In The World...  It doesn't matter what it is you do to be a positive force but it is essential that you do something. A big piece of why we loved the idea of starting Buy The Change was that it gives everyone the opportunity to participate in changing lives without requiring a huge amount of time or money. When you purchase one of our products you are literally changing the life of a woman and her family. You are often contributing to keeping a girl safe. At every visit we were asked, in a very polite way, "Are you going to order more of my products?"  Our answer was always the same "We are, and we are going to work very hard, every day, to tell people about you, your products and your amazing heart"

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my musings. If you like this post or feel inspired by it, please pass it on. Help us spread the word about the incredible women we met on this trip. I would love to hear from you in the comments section. I know you want photos!  They are coming tomorrow, I promise!  You can visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/buythechange to see posts from when we were traveling. Please give gifts that matter, to yourself and people you love, shop for our fairly traded, handmade by women products at www.buythechangeusa.org.

In Peace,

Kari