Last winter we visited Kolkata, and it was our first time in India. Have you been? It's infinitely far from everything we're used to in Sweden. All the sounds — the constant honking, for instance — the smells, the tastes, people everywhere, the traffic, people living on the streets ... Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic city with wonderful people and I'd LOVE to go back, but it's so unfathomably different from our everyday life.
One day, while we were standing outside our hotel waiting for a lift, there was a pickup parked out front. On the flatbed they'd built a bamboo "scaffold" with a sparse floor on top, and up there, easily 6-7 metres in the air on this swaying thing, two men were balancing with extended roller poles to paint the underside of the high bridge with the next level of roads. In Sweden we'd have stopped the traffic and used helmets, guards, a cherry picker, hi-vis vests and you name it, but here there was none of that. Cars and buses just honked and swung past at high speed. I'm absolutely certain that if one of the guys had fallen and hurt himself (or died ...), there'd still be thousands of people queuing for his job. Poverty is everywhere, and it's so present you can almost touch it.
In the middle of all this bustle we had the privilege of visiting a project that makes a real difference. 150 women with a background in extreme poverty and/or prostitution have learnt to print fabric and sew here, and this is how they make their living. They also get things like a pension and healthcare, and their little ones are looked after in the buildings so the mums can work. The courses here are popular and they change lives, and they open up opportunities the women could only dream of before.
We met a woman who was absolutely glowing. She's a pattern maker now, but both she and her mother had a background in trafficking. She's the one who worked out the designs for the wash bags and tote bags we sell, and she's done a really lovely job.
A big load of tote bags arrived the other day, and they're so pretty! Sewn in organic cotton and printed with eco-friendly dyes — the craftsmanship is gorgeous and the seams are perfect.
So lives are being transformed here, stitch by stitch, and the more of these products we sell, the more we can step up our partnership with them. Are you in?
We also got to visit a school that's run by Christians, and while we sat having coffee with the head teacher she told us about the children's backgrounds and about their futures too. Many of the children's parents sit on the street corners every morning hoping someone will come and pick them up for a bit of simple work that day, so they'll earn a few coins. That's usually the children's future as well, but children who get the chance to learn to read and count can have completely different lives. She told us proudly about former pupils who are now working as nurses or teachers — really unthinkable, given their background. Despite the heat in the room I almost shivered where I sat on my plastic chair in that brightly painted room. This is how you transform a country.
