Warm Heart at Work

The Warm Heart office porch now has a new name – the Mae Wan Microenterprise Knowledge Center – and a small (well, tiny) budget (10,000 baht, about $300).

It did not take long for the word to get out, either. Within days the “old ladies’ group” of our local temple had moved in and now our porch is humming with activity. The ladies are nominally learning to weave (better) but really they are just having a fine old time hanging our with each other and being doted upon by the entire staff.

The Microenterprise and Microfinance Project has spent the past two weeks transforming the front “porch” of the Mae Wan offices into a training space. Mae Joom has set up her big loom for weaving trainings. We have two – and will soon have ten more – spinning wheels, a large collection of very, very large pots for boiling roots, leaves and whatnot to make dye, and a triple decker “table” made of slats and mosquito netting for silk worms. (We are currently nurturing about 20,000 very small worms, which will take about two and a half more weeks before they spin their cocoons.) Rough wood shelving along two walls hold a strange collection of machetes, mesh dippers, big balls of string and bamboo baskets. Two huge green plastic tubs hold industrial strength rubber gloves, aprons made of old outdoor advertising banners, tools, box cutters and nails. Tall, black plastic tubes of the kind that architects use to carry blueprints around in stand in corners full of large teaching posters with garish pictures of silk worms in every stage of growth.

The MMP is ready for Monday August 17, date of the first scheduled, soup-to-nuts, combined microfinance and microenterprise training. Tan Nai’Ok, our Sub-District head, was so impressed by our sweaty preparations, however, that he named us the “Mae Wan Microenterprise Knowledge Center” and gave us a budget without waiting!

Warm Heart is bursting with new life. Six new interns have added almost more energy than we can stand and have reinvigorated everyone. They are very task oriented and we are already seeing results. I have set impossible goals for the summer – and have every intention of seeing them accomplished!

Aisha and John are working with HIV+ mothers and their HIV+ kids to develop a support program. What they have learned through interviews so far is that Phrao has some 15 HIV+ kids 12 and under (kids born before access to anti-retrovirals all died). The kids are shunned in the their villages and at school. Their mothers receive medical advice when they or their kids are sick, but no help to be better mothers, to deal with their kids’ questions or their own social isolation. We hope that together with a group of mothers and older children Aisha and John can develop a program that Warm Heart will be able to operate for the – unfortunately – growing population of HIV+ parents and children.

Aisha Scherr-Williams is a 2009 grad from University of Puget Sound and will be attending USC Medical School in the fall; John Arnold is UVA grad who is completing a Masters in Pacific International Affairs at the UCSD School of International and Pacific Studies.

Josh is laboring alone in back of the office to build a prototype solar hot water heater. Hot water is an unknown luxury here – but much appreciated by everyone who has ever tried it! (You need only take an ice cold bucket bath in December when the temperature is 40◦ to appreciate why.) But available heaters are electric, expensive, expensive to operate, and environmentally unfriendly (a large portion of Thailand’s electricity is produced with coal). Josh’s challenge is to harness the sun using recycled materials – old 55 gallon drums and insulation made from flattened Styrofoam food containers (themselves a ubiquitous, non-biodegradable environmental disaster here). If he succeeds soon enough, his next project is to make the Warm Heart Children’s Homes an industrial strength solar rice and soup boiler using an abandoned TV dish.

Josh /Wiener completed the Global PACT Thailand training at Rajabhat University in Chiang Mai in June and will return to Rutgers University in the fall where he is a double major in Political Science and Environmental Policy planning to graduate in 2011.

David, Sylvia and Zack have joined the Microenterprise and Microfinance Project. David and Zack have already assembled a library of microfinance training manuals and teaching materials. We will begin putting together the Warm Heart program next week. (Our clients are way behind the assumed clients of the normal training programs. We will have to back into things a bit more slowly starting with the basics of a family budget and building from there.) Meanwhile Sylvia is designing a microfinance market survey that she and Mae Joom will take into the rice paddies and lamyai orchards next week.

David Rose is a researcher on loan from Prof. Somboon, a senior leader of the Karen people in Thailand. David, an ex-lawyer now engaged full-time in NGO work, is working with Warm Heart in preparation for his work with the Karen. Sylvia and Zack Wagner-Rubin are both MPIA candidates at UCSD IR/PS.

Warm Heart Micro-finance Project made its first loan last week. It was a not entirely disinterested loan, since our first customer is P’Tai, the owner of the restaurant immediately across the street from the office. We love her food and we appreciate how smart her decision was to locate opposite the local government complex and just down the road from the biggest employer in the district.

The Micro-Finance Project loan - a huge 23,000 baht (about $650) - gives P’Tai the working capital to buy her supplies wholesale and weekly, rather than retail and daily, and to expand her evening business selling beef BBQ, beer and whiskey. If her projections are correct, she should be able to double her daily income from 200 to 400 baht (about $5.75 to $11.50).

For P’Tai, who lives in a “room” that is actually the open end of an agricultural shed with her two boys, ages 9 and 11, this increase in income is the difference between staying dirt poor forever and the chance to make it. According to the terms of her loan, every week when she makes her loan payment she is required to deposit an equal amount in a savings account. (This is the first time in her life that she has ever had savings.) At the end of the one year term of her loan, she will have savings worth the 23,000 baht of the loan principal plus the 6% interest the WHMF Project will pay her - three times what a bank would pay IF they would accept her as a client.

For individuals such a P’Tai, micro-finance of the sort that Warm Heart will be offering is crucial. The poor in Phrao have no access to the formal banking sector because they don’t have enough money to qualify to open accounts and because they don’t own anything that would qualify as collateral in the eyes of a loan officer. They do have access to a thriving informal money lending sector - at interest rates that start at 5% per month (60% per year) for the best credit risks and go to 20% per month (240% per year) for the poorest of the poor.

At the rates available to the poor, there are no legal investments worth making. At the rates the Warm Heart Micro-finanace Project will offer - 12% per year - combined with “forced” savings at 6% a large number of business opportunities open up from the expansion of tiny restaurants such as P’Tai’s to tire repair shops and laundries.

I recently looked at the blog published by Paul Kuehn at Global PACT. I really liked the fact that it combines posts about real people doing real things to solve real problems. It’s not just about how the dot.com billionaires have decided to find a cure for AIDS. It’s about how groups of college students have solved some small but significant problem in their university’s neighborhood using the knowledge they learned in class. I love to have evidence to point to when people say - as so many do - “but what can I do?”

The other thing I like about the Global PACT blog - http://blog.globalpact.org - is that it’s got lots of information about how to make change. After all, wanting to do something is seldom enough, knowing how to do it makes you a whole lot more likely to succeed!

Reading the Global PACT blog also made me think that it would be useful for us to offer links to other blogs that deal with our areas of interest: community development and activism, kids, sustainable development, microenterprise, microfinance, alternative energy and the environment, women and development, public health.

Do you have any favorites to suggest? Please let me know in a comment.

That got their attention. It was not the sort of opening that the HIV/AIDS group had expected from the old falang sitting on the floor in front of them. But Michael Shafer, co-director of the Microenterprise Project, didn't stop there. "Thousands of them," he said. "This big," he said, holding up his thumb. The thirty five men and women crowded onto the floor of a cramped room at the Phrao Hospital burst out laughing and waved their hands in horror and protest. So began the Microenterprise Project's newest initiative - small-scale silk farming.

For months Shafer and partner Prapatpong Daungmawong (known as P'Toon) had been investigating microenterprise possibilities for the HIV/AIDS affected. They are often isolated from community life, unskilled, lack mobility and can't do hard physical labor. But the available work such as basket making and traditional needle work pays next to nothing. (A three day job can earn a dollar.) Then a chance talk with "the Maechee", Buddhist nun Pranom Pengtowong, leader of Microenterprise Project partner the Pa Dang Village Women Weavers' Group, offer the perfect solution. "Maybe they would like to raise silk worms," the Maechee suggested.

For the next weeks P'Toon and Shafer commuted to Chiang Mai to consult with Chiang Mai University's Traditional Textiles Project. They consulted with farmers around Phrao. Most important, the received an audience with the senior monk of Phrao District who has long made the plight of the district's thousands of HIV/AIDS sufferers his concern. With his blessing, the Microenterprise Project is now partnered with the Wat (temple) to create business opportunities for the Wat's large HIV/AIDS support group.

And so there they were on the floor of the hospital trying to convince thirty five people that there was a real future in feeding chopped leaves to 20,000 voracious worms for twenty straight days. (Did you know that 20,000 silk worms eat 115 lbs. of leaves a day for their final few days?) To their credit, the representatives of the HIV/AIDS group were willing to suspend disbelief and accompany Shafer and P'Toon on a field trip to the Maechee's silk farm in Pa Dang.

What a romp. Imagine three pick-up trucks full of overgrown teenagers pulling up on a dirt road in front of a couple of little bamboo huts and a lot of sorry trees. From the side of the road appear a dozen locals wearing huge floppy hats against the sun and waving hello. The HIV/AIDS folks are piling out of the trucks waving their hats and hugging all the locals they know. And in the midst of it, the Maechee sails in dressed head to toe in white - big white hat, loose white top, long flowing white robe.

Greetings finally over, the procession straggled up to the little houses. Instant and complete silence. Rapt attenttion. The Maechee's head silk man parted the blue mosquito netting and tied it up. There hung row after row of silk cocoons, thousands of them. People pushed closer and closer to stare. They elbowed each other out of the way to get a better view. They gaped. Then there was an explosion of questions. The poor guy didn't have a chance; he was crushed by them. The Maechee had to save him by pulling him out of the worm house and creating an orderly circle around him so that he could breathe.

Everyone loves worms.

Micro Enterprise has gathered another shipment of products that is now en route to the US and scheduled to arrive in time for Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year and the official start of the holiday shopping season. The featured products are HANDCRAFTED evidence of the local artistry in Phrao.

Warm Heart’s Micro Enterprise team recognizes the rare beauty of the products of Phrao as well as the creativity of their makers, and looks forward to to sharing these items with an international market in time for the holidays. Most importantly, the Micro Enterprise team looks forward to the support these sales will provide to the Phrao community.

Some of the most popular items from the Back-to-School shipment are to be featured in the Holiday sale.  A colorful array of scarves from the Weavers of Wat Toong Luang are guaranteed to keep its wearers warm and fashionable this winter season and Saa paper products from Baan Mayaoon Saa Paper Factory include stationary sets, boxes, and notebooks.

In addition, the artisans have created some new products for the holiday sale, including Saa paper lanterns in various shapes, and colorful mobiles all from Baan Mayaoon Saa Paper Factory. Warm Heart is also testing out the children’s market at high-end boutiques with a few sample sets of wooden toys and puzzle games from various stores located in the furniture district of Chiang Mai.

This holiday season, make a conscious decision while spreading the holiday cheer by gifting with Warm Heart’s products from university sales at Northeastern, Rutgers, and UCSD. A beautiful gift that supports artisans and small business development on the other side of the world will bring us all together in celebration.

Dr. Michael Shafer, Warm Heart’s founder, is also the founder of another unique program that runs hand-in-hand with Warm Heart Thailand. Global PACT is an international training program for social activism for students and now adults. The training takes place in developing countries and builds an international network of individuals able to identify and solve problems in their community.

As a start-up NGO, Warm Heart Thailand is the ideal location for a Global PACT training. The training this past week was the first to explore the unique adult dynamic—bringing adults from the local community together with adults from America. For a week and a half, four American retirees came to Phrao to participate in training workshops with some of the Thai staff. The participants were asked to reflect on the issues they encountered and to identify possible solutions, turning professional skills acquired over a lifetime into tools for social transformation.

The Global PACT training for adults went so well, Warm Heart is looking to run the program again and again. Much thanks to those brave participants and flexible trainers who paved the way!

To learn more about Global PACT, visit www.globalpact.org.

Warm Heart and the Weavers of Wat Toong Luang have had a long friendship, and now a symbiotic partnership, so it’s about time we share their story with the world.

This is the inspirational story told by the Weavers of Wat Toon Luang to Warm Heart staff over the course of several sit down meetings…

It all started 12 years ago, when the women of Phrao , an agriculturally-based society, realized that farming alone would not provide enough income to support their families. They were quickly falling into the grip of poverty, especially during the dry season when the rice fields were arable. The desperate mothers, wives, and daughters went to their place of guidance, the local temple Wat Toon Luang, and asked Samuapichet, a monk and friend, for help. Samuapichet recognized their desperate state, and considered artisan training as the best solution. He asked the government for some help, and with a small sum of start-up money, brought these women together into a weaving cooperative. P.Lah, the leader of the weaving group, taught the initial group of seven women how to spin thread, run a loom, and weave scarves.

It started off slowly in the beginning, with each woman earning less than one dollar a day. Today, the Weavers of Wat Toon Luang have 22 women weavers and each woman earns an average of 3 dollars a day. They can weave more than scarves, and their products are high quality, beautiful, and made with care. However despite their progression, these women continue to work in the fields during the day and weave by night. Most of these women and their families do not own land and they work several jobs to try and make ends meet.
At first glance, the Weavers of Wat Toon Luang make scarves, and shawls, and placemats. But look deep between the threads at this brave story of women who battle poverty and weave to build a better future for their families. These products are so much more than what they seem—they’re a mark of resilience, hope, success, passion, struggle, and most of all, they’re the love of a mother for her children, or a wife for her husband, or a daughter for her parents.

In the early morning rain, I sat in the bed of a pick-up truck, crushed between fellow staff members as we lurched up the rocky mountainside. Finally, I was traveling into the “field,” to visit the hill tribes, to meet face-to-face with those who were the basis for our community development efforts. Our mission was simple—to open a dialogue with our hill-tribe friends in hopes of discovering ways to work with the community to achieve their basic needs—or so we thought.
Journeying up the mountain through wet mud and on broken paths, we passed steep cliffs where I noticed bamboo structures carrying water to the people. I remembered how I drank fresh mountain water from the same bamboo spouts when I first experienced my mother’s homeland of the Philippines as a little girl. After an hour of sliding and getting stuck in ditches, we reached the first village. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon surveying families, discovering future Warm Heart products, and waiting for our saving grace – a caravan club of off-road trucks called Free Life Off Road Club. This off-road club offered their time, trucks, and donations to Warm Heart’s weekend in the hills of Phrao.
The brigade of super-sized trucks came rumbling to the top of the mountain in time to view the setting sun over the valley of Phrao. The entire Warm Heart staff camped on top of the mountain and I felt a rush of happiness as I experienced another adventurous outing—eating delicious food and singing songs late into the night, the Warm Heart way. The cold night air reminded me of the autumn season at home in Vermont, but I was happy to be with the people here, who I so greatly respect and admire for their desire to solve problems within their own community.
In the morning, we visited three villages. I recognized some of the children who attend the Sanhokfah children’s home in the lowlands of Phrao. This is the children’s home where Warm Heart hosted our health-oriented day camp. Having the children there greatly enhanced the experience of visiting their families and villages. I wanted to, right then and there, make it possible for every child to have the same educational opportunities as I’ve had, as they deserve. Yet while in many of our interviews, parents were certainly concerned about their child’s future in education, they also expressed their concern about their child’s wellbeing at the children’s homes. However, with limited income generated in the mountains, the parents can hardly afford education and the costs of putting their children in better homes doesn’t even seem possible. I felt the struggle of a hill-tribe parent first hand. Warm Heart has identified and is now working to resolve issues with access to healthcare, education, and poverty in these villages to build a better future for these children.
By experiencing and learning of the lives of people living high in the mountains here in Phrao, I felt that I grew closer to my mother who was born in similar situation in the Philippines. As for me, growing up on the other side of the world having anything I ever wanted, I have always wanted to understand my mother and what her life was like so different from mine. I came to Thailand because I want to be part of the change to reduce poverty through micro enterprise. But on a deeper level I’m also learning about both of my parents; how my father lived during his Peace Corp experience in the Philippines and what it means to be my mother’s daughter.

Written by: Emily Turner

Northeastern University

It is the beginning of October and holiday bells have already started ringing at the Warm Heart office. The Micro Enterprise team has begun work on a Warm Heart Holiday collection with sites visits to the Wat Toong Luang Weavers and Baaneeyon Saa Paper Factory.
The feedback from the Back-to-School sales in New Jersey boutiques and on university campuses has provided valuable market research information. The team is now back at familiar locations, Wat Toong Luang and Baaneeyon Saa Paper Factory and is once again placing orders and researching new products. Thus far, the holiday sale will consist of an array of colors of Wat Toong Luang scarves, Saa paper notebooks and jewelry boxes, as well as some new “test” products, including wooden children’s toys, Saa paper mobiles, stationary sets, and a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors of Saa paper boxes. These site visits have provided the team with time to collect essential product research, as well as community research.
Currently, Warm Heart is working with relatively well-established artisans. Half of the proceeds of the Holiday sale, like the Back-to-School, will go to local artisans boosting their income and expanding their businesses. The other half of the proceeds goes to Warm Heart to fund other micro enterprise initiatives, including projects that work with the poorest third in Phrao, specifically the community living with HIV.

This Holiday season — shop with Warm Heart and give a gift that will make a difference!