Welcome, 18 new knitters

Yesterday was our last day of training at Toul Sambo. That's a total of 15 training days spread out over a month and the results are fantastic! Today I went back to the community with Mony to talk to each of the knitters (I finally have a competent translator) and they were all pleased with the training and what they had accomplished. Several of them said they really enjoyed the training because it gave them a chance to sit together in a relaxed atmosphere and talk while learning. Others were, of course, looking forward to earning an income.

The very good news is that Mony accepted over 60 finger puppets that had been knitted during the training. There are more still to be collected but they had not yet been mattress stitched together. Knitters at Toul Sambo will do all the knitting and stitching minus stuffing the head, putting on the eyes and attaching the head to the body. That will be done at the head office for consistency. About 5 of the knitters are still not confident with mattress stitch and Mony, Tyna and Rofi are going back out on Monday for a day of training on this.


On Thursday we'll give each knitter a certificate of completion and have a small party to celebrate the hard work of all the participants.

First puppets from Toul Sambo

Yesterday, the trainers went out to the community armed with plastic eyes, tapestry needles and coloured thread. Each knitter got to make up one or more of their finished puppets to keep for themselves or their children. I went this morning and some of them were wonderful! See photos below:

Finally for Lena: your knitter, Touch Chayron with her first monkey.

Ven Thy and Chan Thyda.

Soy Srey Neang.

Sin Soeun and Noun Soka.

Krouch Koun, and the best monkey of the lot.

Our champion knitter, Ven Vireak.

All this is very good as we have a handful of orders for Christmas and will need more knitters soon. Hopefully, we get more orders to we can keep purchasing from the TS knitters and keep them working. I got some of our smaller items into Baitong Restaurant yesterday. They support several other NGOs and social enterprises and have a small shop area at the front of the restaurant to display items such as honey from Mondulkiri, baskets from Battambang and pepper from Kampot. All good projects, all providing jobs.

Oh, and the website looks better organized (www.cambodiaknits.com) but the links are still AWOL and I want to put more information on it over the coming week. I also hope our graphic design guardian angel in Amsterdam gives us some advice...

Future Knitters

I wanted to post this since our visit to the community last week, but didn't have a chance until now.

On Friday Davy and I visited Toul Sambo again to have a short meeting with community members to tell them about Cambodia Knits training, working for CK, training dates and so on. When we arrived, Hope, a health organization (I have tried to look it up, but there are at least a dozen orgs with HOPE somewhere in their names) was there giving basic check-ups, distributing ARVs and holding a short meeting to pass on some health messages.

We introduced CK to everyone there. Some had met us the week before, but most people had been away for Pchum Ben so it was there first time to hear about the training and the possibility of working for us. I showed some of the completed monsters and they were very well received (lots of smiles from the kids). Everyone was very eager to give knitting a try, to see if they could learn how to make the funny creatures.

Surprisingly enough, there are several men who want to try as well! I had presumed that only women would be interested, as knitting is generally considered in the feminine domain (not saying I agree, but really, that is the generalization) perhaps even more so in Cambodia. I had always imagined that the project would be about helping women in these communities, but if men want to join, I can't and won't have any objections. One of the men used to work as a motodup (motorbike taxi driver for those not savvy in the ways of Cambodia) before the relocation. The city is too far for him to travel to from Toul Sambo. He has five children to support on his own and if knitting for CK is going to help him do that, all the power to him!

Some potential points of conflict: another organization, a medium sized international NGO working on various projects around Cambodia, has talked to the community leader and the vice-governor about setting up handicrafts training in the community. Their support, however, will stop at training and not provide any access to markets. Also, the community leader, who encouraged the community members to accept the relocation and who currently lives in PP in an apartment given as thanks for these efforts, is drawing up a proposal to get funding to build a handicrafts center and 20 sewing machines. Ultimately it will be up to the community to decide which is the most advantageous and suitable for them.

That being said, the above two proposals are 'in the air' and no one is certain how or indeed if they will materialize. Its important, however, to be aware of the other things that are in motion in the community and be prepared for any possibility. Again, having the support of Davy, who knows the community well will be invaluable. In the next few weeks, we'll visit the community once a week (myself and three knitters/trainers) to introduce the first steps of knitting, find out who is willing to commit to the training, collect some basic information about each family and start to build relationships. Building relationships based on trust and respect is not something that many businesses aim for with their employees, but for a social enterprise, I don't see how we can have any hope of success without it.

Toul Sambo

This morning I drove out to the Toul Sambo relocation site with Davy, PhD student Julie who has been doing research at the community even before the eviction, and two knitters, Mony and Rofi. Today's visit was to meet briefly with the community, show them some knitted products and make plans for a meeting next week. A lot of families were away as Pchum Ben (festival of the dead) starts tomorrow and this is one of two times in the year when everyone (who is able to) travels to the provinces.

First some background on evictions in Cambodia in condensed form. Land values in Cambodia and especially in Phnom Penh have skyrocketed over the past few years. Many poor urban communities that have been living in crowded pockets of the city for years or decades, now find themselves occupying prime land. Many of them are eligible for land titles under the current land laws but because rule of law is a fiction here, most of them are facing eviction. Or have already been evicted.

Last week, the government canceled a World Bank project (LMAP) which had been working since 2002 to develop a fair and transparent system of providing land titles. A recent internal study showed that while the project had had some success in rural areas, it had mostly failed to secure land rights for the poor in urban areas. Its attempts to remedy this situation were not taken well by the government and Hun Sen very publicly ended the program, stating in a speech that the WB rules were too complicated and the project came with too many conditions. Those conditions: follow the law and give land titles to those people with rights to them, not to highest bidder.

So evictions continue and the recent forced resettlement of families from Borei Keila to Toul Sambo was particularly condemned locally and internationally. The reason: the majority of the families have at least one member who is HIV positive. In the process of deciding which families would be granted an apartment in the city and which would not, these families were sidelined from the start. By moving them all to a location outside of the city, far from medical care and grouped together into what other locals call "the AIDS village," authorities have made it incredibly difficult for these families to survive. Read more about the background of the community and the eviction here and here and here.

This is the community that Davy suggested I work with and why we drove out there today. The situation is as grim as the newspaper articles tell it. The rooms are small and hot. According to Julie, a rep from Doctors Without Borders who had worked in emergency relief situations said the house construction did not even meet the basic standards of emergency housing. Furthermore, he believes that the structures won't last for more than a couple years of heavy rains as the foundations are not constructed well. There is no running water and inadequate sewage system. Now the residents can collect rainwater but what happens in the dry season? There is nowhere to find work nearby and community members can't even hope to establish small businesses as locals won't buy from them anyway.

Below are some photos of the site. The first two are of the "shelters" where the Borei Keila community is living. Each family shares a room 3.5 x 4.5 meters. The third photo is of the buildings only a few meters away that are being saved for soon-to-be-evicted families from another area of Phnom Penh. These are much larger and of much higher quality.






Relocation sites don't need to be this bad! The municipality of Phnom Penh spent as little money as possible to construct this site (one can only speculate how much was lost at various stages to corruption) and did it quickly with little planning. They moved the families there even before adequate infrastructure was put in.

It's very likely Cambodia Knits will start to work here. Mony and Rofi showed some interested women finger puppets and Bunny Nuggets. They also showed them some basic techniques and how to cast on. A lot of women rushed in to give it a try and according to Davy they are really keen to learn new skills so they can produce something (anything) to provide for their families. The next step will be to organize the training and a few weeks later get them set up with enough materials to be able to start knitting!