Friday, May 29, 2009

Nepalese clayers




Every now and then, something comes along that touches your heart and compels you to take action. If ever there was a plight worth supporting, it's this one. My friend Wendy Moore, an australian polymer clayer living in Nepal, has been teaching Nepalese women jewellery making skills and polymer claying skills to help them become empowered and self sufficient. They are survivors of violence, domestic and trafficing (selling girls into prostitution) and are looking at ways of generating an income for themselves and their families.
We are working on ways to get them more clay and supplies, the difficulty is that even if we amass an army of people happy to donate clay, the postal service is very unrelaible. If anyone can shed some light on successful ways to get clay through to Nepal, please write to me at madbeader@westnet.com.au
In the meantime, there is more info at the Aussie Polyclayers forum
for those interesting in trying to send small amounts of clay to keep them busy till we come up with more permanent and successful solutions...

6 comments:

maria psaltis said...

Mel,it is so wonderful to see that the word is spreading about this,thankyou for being such a cool lady and taking action!

Swati said...

What a a beautiful thing to do. I face the same problems when mailing things to India..my home country. Mailing is not very reliable. We usually send things with people traveling between USA and India. Once it reaches India, then the mailing is reliable. Anyone traveling regularly to Nepal?

Genevieve said...

I am so very inspired by Wendy's story and am going to try and send some Kato clay from here in the US following the "low profile" packaging instructions.
Would it also be OK with you if I posted the story to my blog and linked to yours?

Mel said...

Thank you so much for your support. It's rare I wave the flag for anything but this is a compeling cause and I just HAVE to get involved.

True, what we need is someone who is traveling to Nepal on a regular basis. ANYONE OUT THERE???

Oh yes, please feel free to do that Genevieve.

Artgalcrafts said...

Mel loved Wendy Moore and was ther when she said she was going to Nepal.
Our loss their gain.
Want to send what Dona Kato Poly I have hope I can.
Love
Elizabeth.

Janis said...

Hi Mel,
I was so inspired by what Wendy is doing I sent some clay today and I put it through the pasta machine at the thickest setting. Two colours stacked on top of each other wrapped it in plastic and put it between a plastic chopping mat, tapped it up, put it in an A4 tough bag and it went as a letter rather than a parcel. The cost was $8.20 for approx 400g. I then sent a parcel to a friend in Victoria for her birthday and that cost me $12.95 so that shocked me more than the cost of sending clay to Nepal.