Our Pre-launch Women's Handcraft Initiative

Our coordinator, Patricia, has arrived from Austrailia a few days ago and has begun exploring the situation here in the Kathmandu Valley. Sunday we went to Bhaktapur to see the products and workmanship of what Nepal produces. I learned a few things along the way and we had a great shopping day.

Wool yarn store in Kathmandu

Although we've started the workshop for hats and gloves, the women are not ready to produce anything to sell or give as gifts just yet. We are at the point now where we need to select various styles and colors and get the women to pick one style to specialize in. We had a little meeting with the ladies and we discussed a tentitive pay schedule. We came up with a schedule that will allow the women to earn enough to enjoy life a bit. It will be a good living wage; after all, that's the point of our projects.

Many work initiatives pay either a low salary or a small commission; we will provide both. Work initiatives, in our opinion, should not just provide a starvation wage. We also provide a nutricious lunch and an afternoon snack and tea. They only need to work from 10 am to 4 pm.

The women have chosen to sit on the floor, but we have cushions and the are comfortable.

Patricia also plans to make natural fiber shopping bags to export and even brought some patterns.  Nepal has some interesting fabrics and patterns, so it will be an pleasing mix of culture with Westernized variations on traditional themes.

A practice set of hat and glove-not high quality wool. 

This is the third week for our women's group and rather than having the normal attrition that we've had in the past, the group has actually accepted a new member. We provide them with a pleasent setting and all the supplies they need and they have responded quite favorably. Ranjana, the group leader/teacher, is a lovely young woman who's taken advantage of as much training as she could throughout her life and does her best. One of the problems with elevating Nepal is that many INGOs/nonprofits come with money and provide a month of sewing, knitting or looming training, leave the sewing machine/loom for the young woman and leave them without enough skills to find their way. One woman we provided emergency funds for after the earthquake had a sewing machine in her room with no way to use it for an income.

Thursday Patricia went to Kathmandu with Sujit to explore pashmina possibilities. She had a wonderful idea. We plan to use local women in other initiatives to start with. This will assure better quality, as we do not plan to deal in inferior products. We will use only the highest quality materials and inspect the products well.

I hope you follow along with us. We'll be putting the crowdfunder together as soon as we get a few more details worked out. Being as we are a very small NGO in a very small country our marketing strategy is to provide an awesome value for a donation, tax deductible if you are in the US.

 We'll have official news soon, so please stay tuned.

Sujit with Hari's taxi.

For all of you who've been asking how to help (other than sending a donation) please retweet and share our appeals often and if you do give a donation please post a picture of the hat/gloves and give a sincere reveiw of your gifts.

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Possibilities for our woolen hat women's project

We started our women's knitting group last last week and they enthusiastically knitted their way to the bottom of the knitting basket. Sujit, the teacher and I will go to Kathmandu to purchase more wool and other supplies today.

The women made several different styles to practice with, but here are a few they found online that they like. Out of the ones below which hats do you like the best? Can you please tell us the top 5 you'd like to see offered? Please put your choices in the comments.

Do you know of any other designs of hats or other knitted items that would be of high interest for consumers? Please let us know what you'd like to see offered.

We are also planning to start a project as a joint fundraiser for high schools to make a line of football team spirit hats and glove sets.

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Thanks so much for your help.

Follow along with us:

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Phone: +977 015141181  9849930812

What to do in Changunarayan? How 'bout Mt. Biking?

Our volunteer, Nikki, from Belgium, his friend, Rupak and his friend. They had a great day.

One of our supporters from Finland, Anti, left us a couple high quality mountain bikes when he left a couple months ago. We have a standing offer of allowing room rent to be used as credit for bikes from tourists getting ready to return home. Our deal is that you can ride them, or an equal number of bikes, from the bikes that we have on rent any time you come back to Nepal. We've gotten bikes from tourists, like this. But not enough to start a bike rental concession.

Earlier this year a guest offered to donate some money to help us get the project started. We are so grateful for the gift of $1,600 for the project sent after travels were finished. Wow! so nice. There is a good demand here in the village for biking and many bikers come through Changunarayan on bikes.

Now we have 8 high quality mountain bikes for rent. 75% of the proceeds of the rentals will benefit the Changunarayan Village. The other 25% is commission and such for someone to manage the concession.

Since we didn't have enough bikes to actually advertise them, we were just loaning them to our guests and volunteers. Although we can give them for free to our volunteers, our guests enjoy 25% discount ($6 instead of $8). We can also provide you with a day guide if you'd like. I give one of my helpers a bike and the day off to act as host to our guest/volunteer. They could take him to lunch and give him 1,000 NRs/$10 or so for the day to guide them.

We also have several people living in the village who work as local guides or licensed, trekking guides. Hiring people direct from the village is a good way to save money while supporting the economy. Ideally, a tourist would hire a professional trekking company, but for those on a tight budget, a local guide is a wise investment. We are always happy to provide a name and phone number. We only ask that our guest give us a sincere review of the person so we'll know whether or not to continue to recommend them. If you plan to do some trekking you'll enjoy this post about whether or not you need to hire a trekking guide.

We are on the Valley Rim Trekking Route with several interesting villages and temples, forest and streams, and trails that can be both rigorous or mild, depending on the route you take. So, hike or bike, this quadrant of the Kathmandu Valley has much to offer, whether you come to Nepal to trek, study, volunteer or just take in the sites and rest.

Here's the News:

If you are coming to Nepal and like mountain biking come to Changunarayan and let it be your home base. Our mountain bikes are soon to be located at the entrance of Changunarayan and will rent for 800Nrs./$8 per day. We do not have the shelter for them made yet, so give us a call if you have interest. 015141181 or 9849930812. Stay with us at the Star View Guest House and get $2 off each mt. bike per day, as indicated above.

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Phone: +977 015141181  9849930812