Before coming to Dhaka I googled around and found a website called Pebbleknits and sent off an email and asked whether yarn for knitting and crochet might be available in Dhaka...the nice lady replied that it was indeed best to bring my own wool.
Fast forward a bit....I am a member of a weekly crafting group which gets together and we knit/crochet/quilt/embroider etc together. One of our group is Samantha...who was the nice lady. It turns out that as well as being an expert knitter Samantha is the founder of a non-profit fair trade organisation
www.pebblechild.com. Pebblechild has over 6000 ladies who make wonderful knit and crochet toys and blankets.
Today we were kindly invited to visit their main office which is about 15 mins from the diplomatic zone.
Slight hitch in the plan...the road was dug up so we had to get out and walk through the neighbourhood
This is their main office - through here a container load of handmade toys are sent out of Bangladesh each week all over the globe. As far as I understand the process, orders are handmade in one of the 63 rural centers which are throughout Bangladesh, in small production centers where women are able to bring their small children, many of whom are cared for in an on site pre-school. The toys are sent to Dhaka for finishing - which may be assembling and stuffing, or adding eyes and faces etc, this is to keep quality consistent. Once finished the toys are washed and dried and packaged with labels sewn on.
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| freshly laundered |
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| speedy crochet |
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| Samantha - and one of the ladies who was feeling the cold |
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| toys for finishing |
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| stuffing |
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| ready for packing and shipping |
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| t-shirt yarn - multiple strands are used as yarn |
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| purple dragon |
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| pre-School |
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| assembly |
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| mad as a box of frogs |
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| pandas get their eyes |
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| all toys are twice checked in a metal detector |
This was an inspirational visit where we were able to see an example of a enterprise which has been built up from a back room of Samanthas home, to being a sustainable business which supports over 6000 women, in a sustainable way. Samantha was pleased to be able to say that she doesn't even need to go into the office every week now, as her team are able to run the business! She still is the driving force behind product development though.
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| back in auto rickshaws |
If you would like to support the business, the toys are available through
Amazon and I can purchase them via the monthly Craft bazaars at a lower price if you would like to let me know.
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