Modern Tribal

If you know me, you know I am the farthest thing from a fashionista. I particularly hate shopping malls. I rarely wear jewelry. And the first purse I carried was a diaper bag. So we often laugh about how I ended up in a position to market handbags, purses and accessories. (See how I just did that?)

I've always thought that God uses our natural talents, inborn personality and "spiritual gifts" for His good. And it's true. But I've learned that he also works through our weaknesses, challenges our insecurities and molds us through our mistakes. And I think He has a particular knack for turning our weaknesses into strengths.

So, fashion and me. I think I gave up on it about the time these came out.

But ever since we've been focusing more on product development, I am constantly scanning a crowd and checking out the choices people make. It started out as research, but I've discovered how fun it is to see someone's personality in physical form. I've always loved good design--graphic design, interior design and architecture--but now I'm seeing how good design can be wearable (and responsible to the people who created it). Jessica summed it up best when she described wearing Huang Nan's new necklace a few weeks back. For me, what is so exciting about my re-entry into caring about fashion is that it coincides with learning to care more about the people who create it.

So I was super happy to be in town for the Renegade Craft Fair last weekend. Not only was I surrounded by good design, handcrafted artistry and unique fashion choices (animal tail belts anyone?), but I was in the presence of the wonderful people who made it all. I was like a kid in a candy shop. In the trendspotting department, my job was easy. Practically every other booth featured tribal themes made modern. Check 'em out.

Featured above: Homako, Leah Duncan, Thief and Bandit, Scarlett Garnet, Courtney Fischer and Jamie Spinello.

Good news for our the artisans of Hill Country Hill Tribers--they have this "tribal" trend down flat!

- Caren

Poetry Videos

I can't tell you how much I enjoy the Refugee Poetry Reading every year. Super excited children meet slightly nervous college students, consume pizza and write poetry, and then travel together to an intimate reading where they have the chance for an hour to lyricize their memories and learn from other people's poems. It's a beautiful evening that few things can dampen, not even a mike I forgot to turn up, a bus stop just behind us, spilled hot chocolate and that sudden rush of nerves no amount of preparation can fix. I was deeply proud of both college students and Village Center kids alike. Here are videos of a few of the kids (I didn't get all of them, sadly).

The first one, Htoo Hti, is the tiniest little sparkler of a kindergartener and the next is her thoughtful, brilliant sister. I get tears in my eyes every time I watch them--I cannot believe we met themwith her mom, Heh Ler Paw, three years ago. Htoo Hti was a baby then, Eh Tan Nah a serious toddler, and they're speaking English better than me by now. It's such a pleasure to watch the children of our artisans grow so proud and strong in their new home.

 

 

Say Htoo Paw, Not Do Hen's daughter. Not Do Hen is one of our favorite weavers; we can't speak the same language, but we often laugh ourselves into tears trying. Not Do Hen is funny. Say is bright and sweet.

 

Nishi gets so nervous every year, but she lives for this day.

 

(These were taken outside on my iphone, so forgive the quality! I'll try to upload a few more soon.) Thanks to my great English class for making this such a special and memorable event. What were your favorite parts?

Hill Tribers and Health Care

There have been a lot of blogs this week taking place in a Rally to Restore Sanity, not the Jon Stewart one, but one focused on how Christians talk to one another. It's no secret that most of us are Christians at HCHT, but we come in peace. We work with anyone and everyone happily.

But I want to talk a minute about being a Christian and some of the things I've heard in Christian circles about health care. I realize health care is a difficult and complex political issue. I have a lot of friends who have children with complicated medical situations and I realize that not one solution suits everyone. But while this debate has been raging amongst people around me, with often very ugly generalizations made about the "poor" who need to get a job, I thought I'd weigh in on what I've seen.

I have spent the last three years working with refugee immigrants in the Austin area. In that time, I know of maybe three families who have had to get serious medical care and did not have a job. All of the other families had at least one person who was working as many hours at as many jobs as they could get to pay for the basic necessities of their lives. Many of them have several children and the women are often not literate in their own language, much less English (which is why we started our non-profit in the first place, to help those women make supplemental income weaving and sewing products to support their families). In those three years, we have spent countless hours on the phone with MAP, Medicaid and Medicare, talking to Volunteer Clinics, dentists, OBGYNs, in the emergency room, at children's hospitals, in labor and delivery--you name it, we've been there.

We are NOT equipped to deal with the medical emergencies. By we, I'm talking about the 5-10 of us who are friends with the refugees. When my husband Jonathan and I started dreaming about a non-profit, we made a list of things we could handle and things we were not doing. Number 1 on the list of things we could not handle were medical issues. We have tried our best not to get too involved, to direct our friends to the right agencies, or to put ourselves or our church in a position of paying for medical coverage. Our philosophy has been the approach of the refugee agency here in town: they want to help refugees figure out the bus route so they can go to the appointments themselves rather than relying on their American friends to do everything for them.

But there are some situations we simply cannot or will not walk away from, some boundaries we run helter-skelter across. Three months ago, we found Ibrahim dying on a mattress in his apartment, vomiting what looked like blood (and turned out to be beetle nuts they all chew). We called 911, knowing we were getting ourselves in way over our heads. A month later, he was out of the hospital after several surgeries and the possibility of dialysis. No one in their family has a job yet; we're not sure how they're going to make it. The medical bills are piling in, including that phone call for the ambulance we made, and yet we would do the same thing over again. They had to have medical coverage or he would die.

I visited a church once in which they spent much of the class time talking about "those people" on Medicare, taking their tax money and having babies (someone's suggestion was that we sterilize a woman after her first baby on Medicare. Yeah.). I'd like to tell you: "those people" deserve health care too. Their children deserve good medical treatment just as much as my babies do. The working husbands who have jobs without health care flat-out CANNOT pay for it. The women are covered when they're pregnant, but that's about it. They all deserve to not make the choice about whether to go to the doctor or feed their families. That's not a hypothetical choice, by the way, but a real one we see all the time. It's rent, groceries or health care. Guess which one they pick? "Those people" are dealing with a system so jacked up that we, the American friends, have spent up to 20 hours on the phone on one day with Medicaid being looped back and forth to the exact same people. I speak English and I don't know what's going on most of the time. I'm getting my doctorate and I can't figure out most of those forms. How people who don't speak English are supposed to navigate this system is absolutely beyond me.

I don't know the answers (I suspect they're not political), but this is more than a debate, these are real life people who really just need medical coverage. So if you'd like to have a rhetorical conversation about health care, great. I suggest, however, that you come spend a day in their shoes first. Meeting their basic human needs is something all of us, Christian or otherwise, should be passionate about.

(If you disagree with me, these are Jessica's opinions, not necessarily those of everyone at Hill Country Hill Tribers, but we're all pretty sad and ticked off at how hard things are for the working poor, so it just might be!)

Refugee Poetry Reading

This Saturday night at 7:00 pm at Dominican Joe, my UT English class is hosting one of my favorite all time events, the Writing in the Margins Poetry Workshop. I (Jessica) am an Assistant Instructor at UT and I teach a class called Reading Women Writers to some great students. At the end of the semester, UT my students lead a poetry workshop in which they teach the elements of poetry to elementary through high school students, the kids from the Village Center. I love it when I can combine two things I love: my English students and the Village Center kids together in one room is a lot of fun. This culminating event gives the UT students the opportunity to teach how formal elements come together to create a poem, how literature can excite and energize younger students, and how their academic concepts can be used outside of the classroom. The Village Center kids get the chance to watch college students in action and see how easy and rewarding it can be to learn.

 As part of our course readings this semester, my students read selections from a book by Ann Jones called War is Not Over When it's Over. Jones spends time with refugee women all over the world, including the Congo, Sierra Leone, Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan, and Burmese refugees in Thailand. The book was difficult for me personally because we work with people from most of the places she visited, but the section about Burmese refugees was especially poignant. The refugees in the pictures look just like our artisans and many of the came from the camp Jones chronicles. The issues they described are ones I've heard over and over again from our friends here in Austin. One of the most important reasons most of the refugees said they remained in camps instead of going back home to Burma was the education of their children. In the camp, there are schools, in Burma, there are not. The reason is devastatingly simple. This is also the reason almost all of our artisans left Thailand and came to the States. The idea of starting over in a new place is daunting and overwhelming, but the draw of educating their children makes it worth it for them. The discomfort they face is nothing compared to the opportunity to give their children a future.

The above picture of Say Htoo Paw, whose mother, Not Do Hen, is one of our weavers, captures my real reason behind this event: The poetry reading gives me the opportunity to help the refugees fulfill their dream of educating their kids. By giving their incredibly sharp children a taste for how fun it can be to learn, we're also blessing our artisans. And that makes it worthwhile on every level. As Michael Scott would say, win-win-win.

And the kids LOVE it. 

Here are a couple of my favorite poems from the Village Center kids from last year's poetry reading:

Learning

I like to learn new things because I know

Something I didn’t know before.

In Africa they would teach us a lot

Of math and my dad would have me

Practice when I got home.

My teacher pushed when I didn’t know

It, so that I would get to know it.

Getting the problems right makes me

Feel good.

Max the Tiger

My name is Max the Tiger,

And one day I was hungry.

I hid in the tall, green grass

To frighten my friends.

My friend pig, said, “Go away!”

            And pushed me soft. 

            I had to leave,

            So I went to Cici’s.

I had no money.

I tried to scare

            The people there.

But they didn’t run.

The manager said,

“If you have not money,

You get none,

So get a job instead!”

I went to school.

I learned a lot.

I learned science, running, reading, math.

I got a job cleaning, and earned enough

To go back for some pizza.

But I was five dollars short!

With a little more work, I got a little more money.

And now I live in Cici’s forever

With all the crunchy, cheesy pizza I want!

If you get the chance this weekend, come to Dominican Joe, get great coffee, and listen to some fantastic poems from some of Austin's rising young poetry stars.

Meet Meh Bu

A few months ago, Jessica received an interesting voicemail: "Jessica, this is Meh Bu! You know me! Call me back. This is Meh Bu!" 

Only one problem, Jessica doesn't know a Meh Bu. Neither do I. For weeks, we asked every Burmese person we knew in Austin if they knew Meh Bu. No go. Since then, Meh Bu has become the official HCHT scapegoat, errand girl and customer service department. If you need someone to blame, have we got a Meh Bu for you!

So, it stands to reason that when we were looking for a model for our new line of Spring Scarves and Rice-cycled bibs, we needed a Meh Bu.

I began my search at a second-hand retail fixture store near my house. Their dimly-lit second floor was full of body parts--arms, legs, and crawling baby mannequins, oh my! Single creepiest moment of my life. I closed my eyes, pointed to a bust and ran as fast as I could down the stairs. If I'm ever in charge of setting up a haunted house, I know where to go.

Once home safe and sound from Creepsville, Meh Bu got strait to work getting our new Etsy shop up and running. As the quietest member of the HCHT team, she knows her place (in my closet) and doesn't talk back. She is versatile, with the ability to model handwoven scarves for grown women or bibs for babies. Meh Bu and I have already had a talk about the kind of body image she is portraying. Kate Moss is so 1996, so let's get some meat on that 24-inch waist!

We're working on getting more photographs of our products on real-live, human women, but until then, Meh Bu is doing just fine. To honor all her hard work, we are running our first ever promotion, just in time for Mother's Day!

Pick up one of our new products in our Etsy store between now and Mother's Day, May 8, and you can save 25%. Just use the promo code: MOMSDAY25. The selection is extremely limited (what you see is all that's left after a run on the store yesterday), so act now to honor the moms in your life.

And if you have any problems using the code, please let us know. We'll get Meh Bu right on it.

Retail Therapy

You know that feeling when you buy something you REALLY love and it makes your whole day? When you walk around and everyone notices your new dress and how great you look in it? One of the things I love about fair trade products is that it expands that feeling. Not only do I feel great about how I look, I feel great about empowering the artist who made my new accessory. I just bought these sandals from Noonday Collection and they've been my staple: they're super comfortable and adorable, but I love that Sseko Designs allows me to participate in a narrative that really matters to me. I am passionate about educating women; it's why I'm getting my doctorate in English. To have the chance to buy shoes that helps send young women in Uganda to college? Yes, please! (I just bought straps in two new colors. Love.these.sandals.)

But I have never experienced the feeling I had this morning. One of my favorite perks about our non-profit is trying out the prototypes. We have to make sure we work all the bugs out before we sell them. Wearing our great new products is just part of my job! This morning I wore the new necklace that Huang Nan made (featured in this post or on facebook), just to try it out, of course.

This is a picture I took of myself this morning with the necklace on at Starbucks. The cashier at Starbucks just asked me about the necklace, where I got it and where she could get one. At my girls' preschool this morning, no less than ten people complimented my necklace between the time I got out of my car and got back to it. Several of them were my friends who knew the story behind the necklace, but many of them did not.

It's nice when you have on something you know other people think is special, but this morning, I felt like sitting down on the floor and crying. This necklace is so much more than just something pretty--this is Huang Nan coming into her own as an artist. We met Huang Nan this time last year; she was pregnant with her third baby, she and her husband were chasing two toddlers in a tiny apartment, struggling to make it and desperate to earn a living. Her husband, Steven, gave his resume to everyone he met. He was willing to do any kind of work to help his family. By the time Huang Nan had her baby, our church, Westover Hills, had offered him a job to replace a custodian who had left. He is a hard worker who comes in even when he is suffering with the malaria that plagues him almost monthly--the church was able to get him health insurance this year (his wife and children were already covered) and it is a huge achievement for him. They are becoming leaders in the community; they are carving out a new life for themselves and doing it with pride and grace.

I thought Huang Nan was a quiet woman when I met her; she let Steven talk most of the time, nodding and smiling but not much else. Something has happened to her this year. She began by knitting some scarves and hats for us; the first few were decent, the last ones were great. (We'll have those on our website in the fall.) As she began to feel more comfortable with us and with her new school, she began to talk and laugh more than we've ever seen. Now, thinking back on when we met Huang Nan, I can tell that she was overwhelmed by her life. A year later, with her husband in a good job and the opportunity to help support her family, Huang Nan exudes a joy that is tangible.

Huang Nan told us not long ago that she can tat and her artistry is amazing. She is accomplished and confident when she speaks of her craft. Through our translator, Dr. Salai, we've been talking to her about her designs and how to make things we think will sell. When she brought in the design for this necklace, she was quietly proud. We were blown away.

I feel almost reverent about my necklace today. This necklace represent my opportunity to see an artist like Huang Nan be empowered, to see her confidence grow, to see her pride as she supports her family and her community. At a time when so many people are cynical about non-profits (fueled by stories about Three Cups of Tea, making headlines this week), we will be as transparent as we can with you. I do this work because of the choking sense of joy I have in the growth I've seen in my beautiful friend. I wear this necklace to honor Huang Nan.

I promise you, we'll get her the supplies quickly to make more necklaces. They'll be for sale in a few weeks on our website. We'll hurry so that you, too, can look lovely while you empower our beautiful friend.

Prototype Party

A few weeks ago, the board and staff at HCHT invited some of our friends to get together and evaluate  new product ideas for our artisans. It was a wonderful evening with amazing food (I'm still thinking about Meagan's artichoke dip) while our stylish friends told us what they liked and what they didn't. This is Jenny, the vice-president of our board, enjoying the dip, which was really, really good.

We have two goals for our new products: We want to honor the artistic and cultural heritage of our artisans. We also want to use environmentally responsible and up-cycled materials. Many of the new pieces were made by the women, several by Caren and me, plus a few ideas we've been gathering. It was wonderful to hear the honest reaction of people whose opinions we value. We loved that Ruchi Agrawal and Patricia Haber from Handmade Expressions came; they met with Caren a few weeks ago and brought designs to the party that reworked our artisans' original products in amazing and simple new ways.

We laid out the new prototypes in categories. Above you can see the yarn the women use to weave each bag, our woven bags, and several rice bag products.

We had several different types of jewelry.

Looking at all of the jewelry the women had been making, it was amazing to think how much work has gone into the new product development. We have pushed these women to change their designs and to try new things; some of these products will never work and some are so good we're going to be ready to produce them immediately. We feel a debt to these hard-working artisans to figure out what is popular and what will sell so that their time is spent in making items that are marketable.

    
We numbered each prototype, put a small bag beside it, and asked our friends to answer three questions: Would you buy this? If so, how much would you pay? If not, what would you change or what suggestions do you have?

We got feedback on each product and then asked everyone to cast a vote on their five favorite prototypes by putting a neon sticker on the bag they liked the most. That helped us see which ideas were immediately the most popular.

After everyone had given us specific feedback, we gathered in the living room and brainstormed for over an hour about what new products we could develop.

One of my favorite ideas was Reagan's--she suggested we turn a hill tribe woven bag into a sophisticated clutch. I already made a prototype (from an old woven bag, a Cheerios box and some duct tape, not my most professional work!) and that one's in the pipeline. Dearing suggested a simple one, making an up-cycled lunch box like a mini version of our Rice-Cycled tote bags. There were also several great baby product ideas that we're working on now.

Honestly, we didn't take many pictures while we were brainstorming  because were all writing down ideas. My mind was so full by the time I left, it's taken me about a month to process everything. We've been thinking through and pairing down based on what's marketable, what's easy to make, and what the women want to work on. They have vetoed a couple of projects and come up with some amazing new ones. We are committed to this being a collaborative process and it is crucial to us that we work with the women to make items that they are as excited to make as we are to sell.

Mostly I was reminded of how amazing it is to work with such a great team. This is Meagan, me, and Caren, the core group who meet with the artisans and have ESL class during the week.

 

Erika, Jenny and Terra (our beloved president of the board who was so busy hosting that she's not in our pictures) are an integral part of what we do. There were friends like Fran who have sat with many of our artisans and taught them to sew; Mary, the intern from last summer, and Kelsi, the intern this summer, whose excitement and passion inspire us; Constance, our new friend with a thousand ideas who just got back from Thailand and who is already moving us in new directions; Megan, who comes every Tuesday for homework help; Jen, our one-woman network and brainstorming machine; and too many more to name. Thank you so much to everyone who came; your creativity and feedback have blessed us more than you know. And to the many of you who weren't able to make it, thank you as well for your constant support.

And now for the results from our prototype party: we have at least three new products ready to go as soon as the artisans can make them. We're launching lovely gray and yellow spring scarves on our website early next week. Caren's getting them tagged and ready for the website, so pictures are coming soon. Trust me, they're gorgeous, and just in time for Mother's Day. Watch our website--we're releasing our new products in limited edition launches, so if you like something, you better grab it fast before it's gone!

Here is Huang Nan's Sunbreak necklace, a hand-crocheted turquoise bib necklace from up-cycled aluminum washers. You can't have this one--I call dibs--but we'll put them up on our website as soon as she makes a few more. I'm absolutely in love.

 

And Ma Kay Htoo's Basmati Bag, the perfect little grab-and-go purse. It's made from up-cycled Basmati rice bags; we're excited to work with smaller purses and I love this one.

Ma Kay Htoo is new to our group and we don't have her picture yet, but she came to her first class last week with her gorgeous little girl and they had matching pigtails. We're so excited to have such a skilled seamstress (and cute mom!) as a new HCHT artisan.

In the next few months, we'll launch two new product lines: Threads of Hope (bracelets, necklaces and earrings incorporating traditional art with up-cycled materials) and Eco-Baby (bibs, diaper changing pads, and toddler art kits--all sewn from up-cycled rice bags). Soon after that we're going to launch Eco-To-Go, including lunch boxes, picnic bags, and many other items. If you're not our friend on Facebook yet, go there to get the latest updates on our artisans and their products. We'll announce our new product launches there, so you don't want to miss any news! Thank you for all your support as we work with this amazing group of women!