Film Festival

Testing this new blog this function on Chrome...

Guess i'm blogging again... Getting ready for moving to Cambodia and writing home about it all.

Check out our film festival fundraiser for CfC in Melbourne on Wed 28th...

Film Festival

CfC UPDATE from Cambodia trip - Feb 2010

So far it's been a productive, thought provoking and also frustrating trip.

I arrived in Cambodia on Wednesday afternoon last week (3rd Feb) and spent a few days in Phnom Penh meeting people and helping Heng (our manager) to find a long arm sewing machine that we need to sew the larger rugs. This is the frustrating part....No luck there so far. We considered cutting one up and welding on a longer arm but it looks not to be possible. Still trying to find a solution to that one and it needs to be fast so we don’t hold up the shipment.

I had a good meeting with Alan Flux, a VSO volunteer designer from AAC (Artisan's Association of Cambodia). He gave me lots of names of people to talk to about different products and materials. He also talked about the need for training local Cambodian Designers as he said that after spending 2 years here developing handicrafts for lots of organisations, there seems to be no original modern local design. Everything is either copied from the past or the designs come from westerners or neighbouring countries. That would be something interesting to work on – developing local design. Alan gave me a design for making a tube scarf out of the cotton we use that will look great.

Heng and I also visited a relocated community just outside of Phnom Penh. One of the groups kicked out of Phnom Penh when the government sold slum land to developers. They were pretty poor and we’ll send someone back to get information about how many kids are out of school. There was another similar community down the road and yet another where they had grouped together all the HIV victims.

We visited a few fair trade shops looking at products we could possible make, getting some good ideas.

I'm now in Siem Reap and have been joined by Ailsa (who sells the rugs in Alice Springs) and Clay (who will move here with AYAD to work for us in July if all goes to plan). Soon (on the 19th) Frank will be with us if all goes to plan there as well – i heard something about a problem with VISAs because he’s Ghanian.

Currently we’re focused on figuring out where to expand to (visiting Projects and villages), vetting CVs to recruit a new social worker and product development and diversification (checking out fair trade shops and projects).

Ali has been working on that as well as putting together a draft village selection questionnaire to help us select our next village in Siem Reap and working on the Child protection policy for implementation.

In Siem Reap we’ve also been visiting a few NGOs who work with kids to see if we can work with them.
They include:
- Green Gecko (very nice street kids residential program most of whom still have siblings with their families who are out of school)
- http://www.greengeckoproject.org/
- New Hope Community Centre (NGO school and programs for a very poor area)
http://www.newhopecambodia.com
- Angali house (education for street children)
http://www.anjali-house.com/html/
- Pepy (focused on education)
http://pepyride.org/

We also plan to visit Angkor Butterfly Centre who employ poor women in breeding butterflies (pupae) for export.

We’ve been having our perceptions of how to work with and help kids in the most effective way challenged and been having a lot of discussion and debate on how we can best achieve our goals. We were challenged on the idea of having a simple message (we return street kids to school) at the cost of doing development in a more sustainable and empowering way. It was suggested that we could give people more credit and play a role in educating people in Australia on good development – letting our message be about the lessons we have learned.

We also realised that if we are truly going to work in an empowering way to get kids back to school and keep them there then we really need to be letting them decide the best way to improve the situation of the kids in the village.

Something else that we were aware of and that has been very obvious is that most NGOs here are not working together and that overall there is little coordination and a lot of inefficiency in addressing the problems – specifically in children’s education. We’ve been thinking on how we could help bring everyone together through partnering with the carpets project.

It’s also obvious that some NGOs, while having a lot of heart, are not working in very empowering ways for everyone involved. Clay, Ali and I discussed the possibility of working with them and helping them learn about the benefits and empowerment and community driven development as the primary model of development.

I’ve just finished reading a short book written by a Cambodian man that had a small organisation and was working with villages in the late 90’s just after the fighting. It’s all about how to do development with Cambodian communities in the Cambodian way. The quote that really stuck with me is:

“Participation means that we participate with the village folk, not that they participate with us.”

It’s only 70 pages and I think we need to make this book mandatory reading for everyone in CfC!

Lots of food for thought anyway...

So moving on; Sunday night will see Chinese New Year celebrations start and the fireworks have already begun. On Monday morning we’ll head to Poipet to do a quality check of the shipment going out, to train the staff and work on improving production systems and family case management. Ali leaves on Tuesday and we’ll be back in Siem Reap on Friday to interview Social Worker candidates and finish off any last bits and pieces before returning on Feb 24th.

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip

THE Climate Change animation.. Explains why we are so close to the "tipping point" / point of no return / mass extinction. This one brings it all together... It explains the different feedback systems and how they interact. Digg it, pass it on.. maybe we can make a difference...

read more | digg story

New Rugs, a new organisation and national TV coverage

These are the three big things that happened this week.

First the carpets arrived on the back of a truck.

All 320 odd carpets from the new shipment arrived this morning and are now packed in my garage, with the exception of 10 rounds which have been sent to Cairns via greyhound.

There are lots of brilliant colours and people will love them as usual! This time we have 150 small .4 x .5m mats as well as the new .45 x .65 mats and the new .65 x 1.6m runners as well as the usual rounds, runners and some ying yang designs.

Nearly Legal.

After years of operating under partnership agreements we've taken the plunge and on Friday we lodged our application to become a legally registered organisation.

To be on national TV

Kerrie from ‘Compass’ (ABC tv show) called me for the second time this week and confirmed that they will be shooting CfC for one of their programs when we are in Sydney in the first week of December.


Next week i’m lucky enough that i'm being flown to Sydney for an interview by Foundation for Young Australians. They want to set up a program here that i participated in in Washinton D.C in 2006 (http://www.youthactionnet.org/) and are interviewing all participants.

For me next week (and the weeks after) is all about calling retailers and delivering rugs. Next Friday we'll be setting off in the van for Melbourne and Sydney to deliver rugs and help set up some market stalls.

Gearing up for some serious expansion

To continue on from the post below...

And what a ride it was on the boat from Siem Reap to Battambang...



I've been back in Adelaide 2 months and I still remember that 8 hours it took to cover only about 100km.



It was also the start of a bad run I had with sunburn that trip... But it was worth it in the end. We had a good meeting with PKO (http://www.pkocambodia.org/) in Battambang about possible collaboration and if all goes well they are going to trial the CfC program with 5 of their target families.

The main highlights from the trip were the traidcraft / AAC workshop on Social Enterprizes that I spoke at and the subsequent meetings with the Ministry of Woman's affairs. They love the project and want to contract us to implement it in their target areas in Siem Reap (out the back of Angkor Thom temple).

This will expend the project and give us the funds we need to produce a lot more and keep going until we can sell them. We've already spent the Ashoka grant on bringing production back up to full levels and hiring new staff and now we are waiting on the 10k from the International Youth Foundation so we can start production in Siem Reap with another 20 families.

But first thing's first.. we need to get registered here in Australia and then in Cambodia so that we are a legal body. It's been great to work as a partnership with other organisations but we've separated from our partner in Cambodia and we're now starting to take on enough momentum and deal in big enough dollars that we need to be a legally registered entity.

 

I'd also like to welcome the new staff:

Mongheng SENG (Heng) who will be our new Country Manager.

Naren CHUUT who will be the office manager in Poipet.

And

Chetra CHOU who will be our logistics and procurement officer.

You can read more about them in the upcoming newsletter.

 

More next week on plans, names and new offices...

 

 

 

 

On a roll!

What an amazing few weeks it’s been for CfC...

Friday 27th July- We were joined by a group of passionate volunteers and started doing record sales at the market stall in Adelaide (15 in one day! Then at the WYI leadership program in the evening the volunteers bought another 15!).

Soon with the help of these guys we are going to have stalls in Sydney, Melbourne, Airlie beach and Alice Springs!

Welcome to Tash! – our brand new stall manager for Adelaide and to Tanya! – our stall new assistant who will be Tash’s right hand girl.

5th August - Indira Naidoo joined as essentially a patron for CfC. She is an ex SBS news presenter and now working for www.generationalliance.com, a high level communications consultancy. She wants to help us have a celebrity stall at Paddington markets in Sydney before Christmas, then to get famous designers to design some carpets for us to auction in February and also possibly ask a friend to do a doco on the project!

August 6th - We won the Ashoka Changemakers Ending Global slavery completion against 236 other entries and 5,000 in cash.

August 19th - We were granted another $10,000 toward our expansion plans by a donor agency!!! (Can’t say who until they give us some communications guidelines or something in September)

I’m writing from Cambodia where i’m generally working on expanding the project. Originally I had planned to work more on quality and design (and expansion in the number of families) this trip but as it turned out we separated from our local partner organisation earlier than we had planned (the timing is something to do with their strategic plan that had to be signed by some Ministry tomorrow). So it’s been all about recruitment interviews and office hunting so that we can open our own head office before i leave.

Better get some sleep.. early boat ride from Siem Reap to Battambong tomorrow.

VOTE FOR US!!!!

Hi Everyone,

Help us free children in Cambodia from exploitation.

To help please vote for the Carpets for Communities project in an
online charity competition by going to (www.carpetsforcommunities.org/
vote-for-us) and following the instructions to register and vote. It
will take less than 2 minutes and the $5,000 prize money (and more
importantly world-wide exposure) will all go towards freeing children
from exploitation and getting them back to school in Cambodia.

I started this project with some friends while I was living in Bangkok
in 2004 and now our innovative development project has been selected
as a finalist in the Changemakers "Ending Global Slavery" competition
by a prestigious panel of judges, from over 200 entries world wide.
The winner will be decided by popular vote...you can help us win! Only
4 days to go! vote NOW!!!

We also have a facebook group: "Im voting for CfC to win Changemakers
End Slavery Award"

We are already making a big difference in Cambodia. Please help us
reach more families by forwarding this email to everyone you know...
don't hold back..you'll feel better for it!

Thank you for your kind support,

David Bacon

I also invite you to visit our site at www.carpetsforcommunities.org
and find out all about our project.

--
Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
Email: davidba...@carpetsforcommunities.org
Mobile: +61 (0)424 511 155

Check out Carpets for Communities project in Cambodia on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvG9e8mWSFc

www.Givle.com - Givle (Google custom Search) Save the Environment and
donate to Charity for Free!
Set your Mum's home page.. I set my Mum's already!