December 2011 Press Release
This holiday season, do your shopping in India, Nepal, Brazil, Bali, Egypt, Haiti, Africa, Peru, Myanmar, Tunisia, and Thail and, without leaving Vermont. And get great gifts at wholesale prices.
The 28 th annual International Boutique begins Saturday, Dec. 3 and runs through Saturday, Dec 10. We have an incredible selection of carpets this year- beautiful Tibetan, Kashmiri, Persian, Khasan thick pile carpets as well as Berber Kilim rugs (3x5 to 10x14 in size), fine silver jewelry, a huge selection of handbags, silk scarves, inlaid boxes, soft pashmina shawls, unusual toys, clothes for men, women and children, Cashmere, Alpaca and Yak wool scarves and blankets, handicrafts and unique stocking stuffers and from all over the world. The Boutique is a benefit for Amurtel, all profits go to support projects for women and children here in Vermont and around the world. This year we will also be raising funds for Vermont flood relief.
There isn’t a better way to shop for the holidays and feel so good about it.
The International Boutique will be open from 10am to 8pm on Saturday, 10 to 6pm on Sunday and 10 to 6 weekdays. It will be held at the Masonic Lodge on Rte 100 in Waitsfield Village.Call 496-5500 for directions or more information.
www.internationalboutique.org
December 2011 Newsletter
Water seemed to be an underlying theme during my recent travels. At the end of August I returned to Haiti to work with our team there. Two days later, Vermont got hammered by Irene. The new definition of irony may be going to do disaster work in Haiti and missing the biggest disaster to hit Central Vermont in years. It was extremely difficult to be in Port au Prince when I knew so many in my community back home were struggling to recover from so much devastation.
While in Haiti, I went for the first time to Anse a Pitre, a small town on the Dominican border. This is a very poor community, and often the parents will walk across the border to work in the Dominican Republic, returning late at night or only on weekends. During the day there is little supervision for the children, and many have no access to school. About 6 years ago we were asked to build a school and offer programs to the women in the community. We began with just pre-k and kindergarten, but each year the parents come and plead for us to add another grade. While I was there, construction was going on to add new classrooms to accommodate the now 250 children attending. Although classes weren’t scheduled to begin for another month, even during the hottest part of the day children would come by to visit, anxious for the school year to begin.
On the way up to Anse a Pitre, the road wound through a river bed for about 20 minutes. This ‘road’ was basically just a strip of rounded rocks that rattled every bone in our bodies as we slowly crept along. On the way back it had rained the night before, so what had been a dry bed of rock was now in many places a flowing river, with water coming up to our floor boards. The most interesting part is no one pays any attention to this or thinks it odd that the road and the river are one.
One of the very unpleasant tasks I had to do while in Port au Prince was give our team the disappointing news that we were out of funds and would have to begin closing down our work in the camps. Before we had this meeting though, I went with our four community organizers to meet with the women in two of the seven camps who had been participating in MIKFAB- our self-funded micro credit program. Over the last year and a half it had become clear to us that the best way we could empower the women and families who were living in the camps after the earthquake was to help them restart their businesses. This meant coming up with small loans and training. During our research though, all the agencies providing micro credit were also charging high interest rates or were not interested in working in the camps. Hilde, Estair, Denise and Beatrice, our four community organizers, took it upon themselves to create Mikfab, Amurtel’s own self-funded micro credit program. We started with 80 women, and then added another 125. We provided classes on how to run a business, how to keep records, non-violent communication, and group process, as well as providing loans to each woman. We charged a very small amount of interest, with the understanding that the interest would go back to the women themselves, to be used to improve their communities. To date we have an amazing 100% success rate of loan returns, and small businesses thriving. When I met with the women, they were so excited to share their stories with me, and unanimously stated Mikfab not only had to continue, but had to grow and help more women. They went on to request classes in literacy, and schools for their children.
So here I was getting ready to tell my team we had to cancel all these programs due to lack of funds, and yet somehow found myself telling these women that absolutely, Amurtel would definitely continue the micro credit program and would begin work on creating schools in three of the camps. While I was saying this, I realized the hard truth that I could not bear to walk away from these women and the incredible programs we were involved with. No matter what it took, we would find a way to raise the funds to continue for another year. The painful reality it Haiti is that most of the other NGO’s are pulling out of the camps and many out of Port au Prince altogether. Unfortunately the families in the camps don’t have the option to leave- as there is literally nowhere else for them to move to. So for us, the commitment to these women, children and communities is long-term, and we will find a way to continue these programs.
After returning to Vermont for a few weeks, and helping out where I could with the flood recovery, I took off for Asia. I was in meetings for a week in Calcutta and then scheduled to fly to Bangkok. The night before I left someone mentioned the severe flooding that was sweeping across Thailand and warned me not to go. I was truly shocked- I had no access to the internet and was totally out of touch with the news. I called the airline and found out the airport in Bangkok was still open, so I took a chance and got on the plane the next day. Arriving at the hotel I usually stay at, I found shopkeepers sandbagging, and beginning to move their supplies up off the ground. Everyone I spoke with said the floods would be hitting our area any hour. Many of the vendors I buy from for the Boutique had themselves already lost their homes to the floods and were only coming to work each day as they so badly needed the income. After some research, I realized there was nothing I could do to help the situation, so instead of staying the planned five days, I went into marathon mode- shopping the first day until after midnight, and then again starting the next day at dawn and continuing until my shipper closed for the weekend. I changed my ticket and returned to India the next day, just barely staying ahead of the flood waters. Those two days were such a blur of hot humid weather and literally running up and down the market that it wasn’t until things started arriving here in Vermont via Fed Ex that I had any idea of what I bought for the sale!
There has been tremendous economic growth in India over the past number of years and in fact the richest man in the world purportedly lives in Bombay. But what I saw around me was the result of one of the largest wealth gaps in the world- the beggars I spent time with in the market told me how much harder things are now and I saw many young people with terrible sores and wounds on their bodies. I found out later that many of these are self- inflicted as these youth struggle with their own despair over a lack of food and homelessness. It was heartbreaking to see the loss of hope in these young people.
During the time I was in both India and Nepal it was Diwali- the Festival of Lights and the biggest holiday of the year. There were banners, lights, and wonderfully gaudy decorations everywhere. Street vendors especially were anxious to sell as much as they could so their families too could share in the holiday festivities. These are often whole families peddling whatever they can sell to passersby’s. For instance, the father would sell flutes he had made, the wife might sell wall hangings she had embroidered and the kids would sell necklaces of strung beads. These children do not go to school- the family depends too much on the little income they can bring in. But they are bright, hard-working and have so much potential.
After spending more than a month on the road, it was wonderful to come home to Vermont. I found the Access Road repaved, the Flood Relief HQ in Waitsfield more established as they hunkered down to helping families and businesses rebuild through the winter, and I had an opportunity to catch up with our other Amurtel programs around the world. Recent emails from Pat Munday (formerly of Fayston) from Nairobi updated me on the work Amurtel is beginning in setting up sustainable agricultural cooperatives to respond to the massive drought and resulting starvation that is facing so many millions of families in East Africa.
It seems no matter where I am or what direction I turn to, there is need. But what I also see in abundance is generosity of spirit and a strong desire amongst so many to help those in need. We saw it in technicolor here in the Valley after Irene washed through our community, and I see that same response everywhere I go. I have learned that most people would prefer to reach out to their neighbors than turn away. And it is this which gives me hope for our future and faith in the success of our efforts.
This year the 28 th International Boutique will be at the Masonic Lodge in Waitsfield, from Dec 3-10. Proceeds from the sale will go to support local programs, including the ongoing flood relief work, as well as our projects in Haiti, and around the world. Please stop by!