The start of the People to People Tour began in earnest. Off after breakfast in a mini-bus (a more relaible version of yesterday’s) to visit a couple of Traidcraft suppliers.

Swajan was established in 1999 to promote high quality Bangladeshi handicrafts. It works with 600 handicraft producers creating products such as home textiles, handmade paper, cards and stationery, using traditional techniques in appliqué, embroidery, patchwork and mirror work. The central office in Dhaka employs around 35 people.

The leather cutter in the photograph had led a precarious existence as a roadside cobbler before being employed by Swajan, providing job security, training, and a regular income. Swajan operates an informal social security system for its employees in a country where state security is non-existent.

Next stop was The Jute Works, a registered charitable trust supported by Caritas. Its aim is to provide women in the countryside with work at home, producing handicraft items made from locally available jute. Over the years, The Jute Works range of crafts has widened and now includes terracotta products, which they supply to Traidcraft.

The local electricity company decided to celebrate our visit by switching off electricity to the area “for maintenance”, which meant there was less activity than normal. However, the education team were busy in a well-lit room on the roof doing as ‘train the trainers’ exercise on a new product range. The girls and women come in pairs from the rural areas, and spend four days with the Jute Works before going home to spread the new skills throughout their local group. They also seemed to be enjoying the opportunity for a good girlie chat!

After another lunch designed to show off the standard of Bangladeshi cuisine – fortunately a buffet – it was back to the bus to visit the Bangladesh Parliament building. The parliament was not sitting, so we were able to wander round the debating chamber. Architecture isn’t my forte, but the locals are clearly very proud of their nationality and their committment to democracy. The contrast with the Scots and our parliament back home could not be more marked

We also chatted to the Librarian – the newspapers are full of the capture of a local terrorist – and she was at great pains to emphasise that although Bangladesh is very firmly religious, its people have no sympathy whatsoever with terrorists acting under the cover of Islam – and asked us to spread the message in the west.

Final stop of the day was Prabartana, a retail outlet for rural handicrafts. Mel and I spent our BA UKP 30 missing baggage allowance on some clothes to see us through the next few days. Shamim had then organised a concert of traditional music followed by what we were assured was a buffet ot typical Bangladeshi cusine. Strangely, it was the first meal here that wasn’t very ‘hot’ and so you could actually appreciate the flavours.

Back to the hotel to take a phone call from Mak – the Friday OpenOffice.org event is event is now on!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Fairtrade. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.