Added: Aug 12, 2010

From: ThaiWais

Duration: 5:14

The Good Shepherd Sisters of Nongkhai Giving People A Choice! The Good Shepherd Sisters provide education & work opportunities so that girls and boys from the region of Isan have a choice to take charge of their own destinies. Sister Mary Hayden of the Good Shepherd Sisters is a wonderful soul who firmly believes not in 'giving help to people' but 'helping people to help themselves'! She explains, "What we do is try to help the woman to help themselves. We offer them skilled training and we also sponsor children for education. We find that if a young person has an education or some kind of skilled training and goes to the city, they will have a good chance to lead a decent livelihood. But without education they become the victims immediately of crime or gangs or prostitution or what have you." So the Good Shepard Sisters started by taking a close look local talents and meeting with the villagers. "All the woman here can weave. So we decided, well, let us start there. So you do the weaving and let us see what we can do about selling what you weave. We now have a large program going and we're helping over 200 families. " The Village Weaver Factory allows visitors to see the dexterity and expertise with which items are manufactured. But before this, the girls learn how to convert the woven material into crafts. Sister Mary told us, "Our big problem, of course, is to find sales. Because the more sales we find, the more women and families can help themselves. We have no worries about the quality of the crafts because we receive compliments the whole time on the high quality. The villagers are very very skilled. You show them, give them a sample of some craft and it's done perfectly and quickly." The beautiful woven Isan fabric is called 'Matmee Cloth'. The thread is first carefully prepared, measured and wound onto skeins. A skilled worker can weave about 1 ½ meters of cloth per day. Finished material can be crafted into clothes, bags & accessories and household items (pillows, tablecloths, placemats). It can also be purchased by the metre or... woven to order! 'Matmee' meaning 'tied strings', referring to the way the cloth is made. Dye resistant string is used to tie the skeins into intricate designs. This accounts for the beautiful patterns produced on the final woven material. The thread of the dyed skeins is then wound onto bobbins for use with the hand-operated weaving machines. While natural dyes are still used, colourfast chemical dyes have been introduced to ensure uniformity of colour. Sister Lakana Sukhsuchit helps the girls out with embroidery. She told us, "We have a lot of order for T-shirts. We make the T-shirts ourselves so we can control the quality of the material and sizes". Opportunities are also given to young men and women to learn the ancient craft of pottery making. These high quality handmade ceramics and pottery... vases, garden planters, candle holders, oil burners & decorative boxes are unique in their design and craftsmanship. All the pottery is wheel thrown and designs are carved by hand into the wet clay. Each piece is then fired in a gas-powered kiln and hand-painted. The Good Sisters also help produce other quality items such as wonderful cards and bookmarks, as well as embroidered and ceramic Christmas ornaments. So don't forget what you can do for Santa this year! Village Weaver Handicrafts 1151 Chitapanya Lane Prachak Road, Nongkhai Tel: 042 411 236 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you have any information about people, organizations & events helping people, helping to make Thailand and the world a better place, please contact: JJtvi@yahoo.com

Channel: Travel

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