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Carpets for Communities - Empowering poor mothers to free their chilren through connecting them with market opportunities
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Discussion about entry
Carpets for Communities - Empowering poor mothers to free their chilren through connecting them with market opportunities
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I am inspired by your work
Hello,
I was absolutely thrilled to read your entry about the work you are doing. Your program has all of the elements to make real impact on children's lives:
1) Clear goals
2) Clear methodology
3) Clear target beneficiary number
4) Starting small and scaling out not only in beneficiaries but in services offered/ markets
5) Action-oriented combined with policy solutions
6) Empowering mothers with self-sustainable tools
This is very impressive and you are clearly making a positive and direct impact in the lives of many young children and families.
I think two things could make your proposal even stronger and more outstanding than it already is-
1) Developing a clear monitoring and evaluaiton plan (how will you track the children and families, and for what period of time, what are benchmarks and indicators you will use to determine the "success" of intervening with a family, and what baseline statistics of families and children are you collecting when you begin to work with mothers and children?
2) Elucidate the other types of products that you would like to expand to beyond rugs. I think that you correctly identify that the market absorptive capacity will be limited at some point, and in order to continue to scale-out your program and be a sutainable program you will need to expand to other products that the local and international market can absorb. It would be great to at least elucidate a market analysis plan to identify what these other markets may be, and consider large companies such as the Nike Foundation and others that are now giving large grants to such initiatives and partnering in marketing.
I wish you the best of luck and hope that you continue this fabulous work!
Jessica
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Gender Equality and Human Trafficking Specialist
response to Jessica
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---
Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
Email: davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
Mobile: +61 (0)424 511 155
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
Check out Carpets for Communities pro
response to Jessica
Thanks for your excellent feedback Jessica!
Regarding measurement:
I agree that we should have a standard tracking period for exit families, although it's difficult in border towns such this one which has by nature a relatively transient population.
We could also have more complex benchmarks for success with the families. We still have simple ones (such as "demonstrated financial stability" and "kids attendance rate at school > 85%") but these should certainly be updated to reflect the more extensive plans that we now have for exiting the program, empowerment of the women and the participatory process.
We have taken an extensive baseline surveys, take entry surveys, and take progress surveys measuring various areas such as income, financial literacy, and health, attitudes to trafficking and children's education, education levels achieved, and women's empowerment. We are also starting to track participant’s attitudes to their futures among other qualitative family outcomes. I'll be working on this further when I go over in August.
Regarding Products:
We are currently looking into silk production, dying and weaving (as it have excellent local markets) as well as other uses for the scrap cotton that we use for the carpets. Our partnership with CHO also gives us access to their agriculture programs for the rural participants. Researching and trialling these and other options are an important part of what we will be focusing on over the next 12 months and we are currently working with Artisans Association of Cambodia to this end.
If you could point us toward any other grant makers as well that would be much appreciated, we are just putting together our proposals for a round of grant applications to support our expansion plans.
We really value your advice as we have done this without any support from experts. If you would be interested in on going coaching or feedback I would be happy for you to email me at the address below.
Kind Regards,
David
---
Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of poverty"
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
You can find a product called
You can find a product called Resolve in most stores. It is a stain remover specifically for carpet.
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Hi David, Have you heard of
Hi David,
Have you heard of Rugmark? They've submitted an entry into the competition. Perhaps you could connect with them and come up with some ways that you can work together. Check out their entry here: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/8431
Keep up the great work!
Dana
Rugmark
Hi Dana,
Yeah we have looked into rugmark a little and will do further. I have a volunteer who is helping us get fair trade certified and who will look more into how we could work with rug mark some more.
I was surprised to see their entry as i know the founder is already an Ashoka fellow and didn't realise they would be eligible. They do great work and make for stiff competition!
I really like this completion becsaue you can't help but to admire and support your competitors!
Cheers,
David
---
Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
www.carpetsforcommunities.org
davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
---------- Portland State
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Portland State University, Master of International Management, current student
Networks
As far as expanding into US channels, there is a group called 10,000 villages that operates in US and Canada. www.tenthousandvillages.com. I think they would be very supportive of your work, as they are a fair-trade retail store. Also, what about working the Christian network in the US (since you are partially funded by a Christian organization in Cambodia). Although perhaps a stretch, there is a resurgence in the states of social and environmental justice evangelicals (they are fairly well-funded and motivated). The grassroots viral (free) advertising available on these extensive blogging networks is probably significant.
Good luck,
Brad
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Portland State University, Master of International Management, current student
Hi David, Here is another
Hi David,
Here is another entry that I thought you might be interested in:
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/8576
Perhaps there are some ways that you could work together.
Keep up the great work!
Dana Frasz
Ashoka's Changemakers
Great Idea
This is one of the greatest idea worth supporting. Good luck for your endeavors.
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George
Vote for this project
Dear David, Good luck with the competition. I vote for your project.
goodluck
goodluck
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Password Manager?
Excellent information. I
Excellent information. I agree with most of the points listed.
Dell
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Resume
Impressive
Hey David
Am so Impressed by your programme its extremely practical and innovative. I have a few additional suggestions
1. Is it possible for your programme to involve Policy makers now at small scale, the idea here is to encourage all round ownership e.g imagine a situation where you need to lobby for a policy that will ensure that all profits gotten from your production goes directly to the targeted beneficiary, or even tax holidays for vulnerable communities, If the policy makers are not involved now when you are at small scale, It might be hard for you to convince them of Key challenges when you are a big shot corporation.( Hope it makes sense)
2. What about women who are interested in the Programme but want to do other income generating activities what short term plans do you have for them?
3. Your target beneficiaries are mostly women and Children what about Vulnerable male members of the same community...say single fathers???
Otherwise am too impressed.
Regards
Dorothy
Keep up with the good work
Re: Impressive
Hi Dorothy,
1.
Currently we are focusing all our efforts on making the economic engine work as well as possible and are running a very lean organisation. Apart from working with local leaders and village councils and occasional work with ministries (on things like import and export issues) we don't really have the capacity to work with higher level government. It's something that we are planning on as we grow and have some further resources to direct that way. In fact we are moving our admin office in order to be able to access those networks and will be training up a new manager to work on such higher level things.
Specifically regarding the profits, we employ staff to ensure the participants receive it directly but as we replicate I can see that it may be more challenging. There will definitely be a need to have a good system in place then and we will have to get advice on developing that as it becomes relevant.
2.
Part of our Phase III expansion plans include (as well as expanding to 400 or 500 families) diversifying our products and developing other options for families. You can read the special report that outlines these plans here: http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org/support-expansion-phase
This phase however is going to take some funding and so we are pulling out all the stops for the next 6 months to raise money and access grants for this.
3.
We don't ever exclude men but simply focus on women for the well known reasons that they (generally) make better choices for their families. More importantly we have never come accross a single father family, only single mother or single grandmother families. Many of the women's husbands help them out with the production.
As an aside, some interviews that we did showed that some of the men were surprised that their wives could be useful. This type of work is really important in challenging these views.
Does that answer your questions?
Kind regards,
David
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Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
davidbacon@carpetsorcommunities.org
Congrats
Dear Friend
Your work is very effective and what you are working for children that also remarkable. Onbehalf of our organization I wish to congratulate to become fellow.
Nice entry,
With best wishes
Ameen Charles
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Rights with Dignity
Thank you all - We WON!
Wow! I can hardly believe that we won! All the project were so inspiring!
Thank you to everyone who supported and voted for the Carpets for Communities project! You've helped us change the lives of more children forever.
This really is the beginning of a new chapter or us. We are setting up independently in Cambodia and we are now ready to expand to many many more families and children!
We are only small at the moment and we welcome all kids of support from advice to funding to help us scale up and start replicating.
Our main needs are:
- Sales outlets
- Funding (about $140,000 to expand to 500 families over three years)
- Patrons, Board Members and Advisors
- Coaching and Mentoring
- Volunteers in Cambodia and in export locations (US, UK, Australia etc)
Thank you again everyone!
David,
---
Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
Email: davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
Mobile: +61 (0)424 511 155
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
Judges' Feedback
On July 16, 2008, the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Competition and would like to pass on the following feedback for your entry. Thank you for applying and for your hard work in the field. We are excited to archive your entry to serve as a leading solution for the worldwide community of innovators who are exposing, confronting and ending modern day slavery. We wish you continued luck with your sustainable, innovative, and socially impactful initiatives.
All the best, The Changemakers Team
“This effort is impressive in that it works both to identify children at risk and help them get back into school. It has demonstrated a strong impact on the community level, and has the potential to spread to a global market. It would be great to connect them with a strong marketing director and team.”
“This innovation works to support not one but two vulnerable populations—children and women, and the results are immediate! Once “Carpets” gets involved, the child returns to school and the family has a viable source of income in 24 hours. Fantastic!”
“We look forward to connecting Carpets for Communities with RugMark. Both projects are leading the field in innovation and social impact and would benefit from this partnership opportunity.”
- Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Judges: United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking, International Organization for Migration, Design Within Reach, Vital Voices Global Partnership, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Humanity United.
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The Changemakers Team
Ashoka's Changemakers
This will really be a great
This will really be a great help. This will help these mothers empower their lives.
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This really is the beginning
This really is the beginning of a new chapter or us. We are setting up independently in Cambodia and we are now ready to expand to many many more families and children! Encanto Dentists
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If soda isn't strong enough, try a diluted peroxide solution. This may do the trick. Just be careful because peroxide can bleach the color from the carpet too. It works best on light color carpets.
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