Visit to silk weavers

What an interesting couple of days we have had!  We have been introduced to Janne who started the Tabitha organization in Cambodia. They have wonderful programs to help families here.  We visited a family that has a silk weaving business at their home. The Tabitha programs start by helping a family get a well. They must help dig and prepare for the well. Then they have to participate in a savings program. They have a visit every week from Tabitha to see how they are doing and to get their savings. Every few weeks the money is returned to them with matching funds from Tabitha. They can the buy the next thing they need to work toward their goals such as chickens or bricks.  Then they start saving again. The program goes for about 5 years until they "graduate".  They will have built a new home and have an industry or farm that will support them very well. The change in just five years is remarkable and they do it all themselves. No handouts. 

I loved visiting the silk weaving and seeing what a long process it is to get to the finished product. The silk cocoons come from Thailand and are unwound here. They used to grow silk worms here but Pol Pot destroyed all of the industry and they have not been successful in growing the cocoons here again. They are unwound and spun and dyed and then woven in a very labor intensive process. The end result is beautiful and is sold through the Tabitha stores. It is sold by the meter or in beautiful bags, pillows and other things. There are women who have been rescued from the streets that work at the stores by making the things that are sold there. A truly wonderful group that is doing so much good. All donations to Tabitha go to their projects and products. Their overheard is covered by what they sell in the store.  

The team that is here right now is an amazing group of people.  A retired physics professor from BYU and his architect wife. Heather Willoughby who was a missionary in Korea and went back and teaches at the university in Seoul.  She is a sister to Hunt Willoughby who has been the mayor in Alpine and whose wife is a quilter friend. She also knows the Jennings from his time as mission president in Korea. There is a group of young women who came on a humanitarian visit to help build homes for Tabitha. One of them has been to our home in Alpine and knew Jeff well in high school. There are 4 women from Germany who are going to start selling Tabitha products in a venture in Germany. They serenaded us all the way home with German songs. Then there is the Bedouin couple who are the first to ever visit Cambodia. We loved meeting them and hearing a little about them and their family. She is the first in her family to graduate from high school. She was "chosen" by some visiting humanitarian type people when she was six and send to the city along with her sister and were educated through high school. Her sister also graduated and has gone to college and is now studying to be a lawyer.  Sidra speaks four languages. She talked a little about how difficult growing up was because the Bedouins are looked down on by other Arabs and the Jewish people too.  She now has a business selling wool products made by the women in Bedouin communities. She has an education program for women and girls. The communities are terribly poor and some have an unemployment rate among the men as high as 80%. Her husband is the son of the village chief and they have two children. I didn't realize that the Bedouins were as tall as they are. We loved meeting them and having the opportunity to visit with them over the course of two days. 

The pictures below show the silk dying process from mixing the dye to weaving on the loom. What a lot of work goes into the process.