The longer I am a business owner and the longer I live in Asia and work with local Thai and indigenous Karen people, the more I realize that it's the small choices we all make that can literally change lives.
Like a bow.
What you choose to adorn that Christmas gift or gift basket can't make that much of a difference, can it?
Let me show you this bow from our Pure Thai Naturals Christmas gift box and tell you how it is literally changing one life and one family.
This fabric bow is handmade by the Hmong wife of one of our Thai staff. She HAS a full time job with a respected and well known Thai organization, which shall remain nameless due to the weird libel laws here. She works 6 days a week, 8am to 5pm. This month she had to swap her day off for the public holiday, so her employer wouldn't have to pay her extra. For the month of November with no absences, she brought home just 7,200 Thai baht. Definitely under the legal mandated wage. That's equal to $215.60 for a whole month's work, with only one day off per week. She has a school aged child and, honestly, their family is barely making it.
And so I made the choice to offer her work to make bows for us in the evening.
It would actually be MUCH EASIER for me to buy a factory made bow, like this:
28 baht is about USD 92 cents. But heck, they deliver 200 or 500 to your door and there's no delay and no running about all over town.
As it is now, I have to go into town (a 20 min drive) and buy the gold fabric ribbon, the red fabric ribbon and the gold string for the tie off. As you can see, they were OUT of gold string, and so our current bows are featuring a silver tie off instead. Tomorrow morning I will have to make a separate trip to town to another shop to get the gold string.
She offered to make them for 5 baht. I refused and insisted on paying her 7 baht. In one evening of about 3 hours (after dinner 6.30pm to about 9.30pm) she can make about 50. Which gives her 350 baht, which is more than she earned for her 9 hour working day. And she can watch her child and be at home while she does it.
I actually save money on the bows, if you don't count the time or petrol for me to run around and gather the bits. One finished fabric bow from her comes in at around 12 baht (around 30 cents), inclusive of the materials.
It's a bit slower, all round, and I have to plan better. But if I plan ahead and send her the ribbon well in advance and remember to buy the bits when I'm already in town so it doesn't need a special trip, it actually doesn't cost more to take the fair trade option. It costs less.
This week she's making 150 bows for me, meaning basically 3.5 extra day's wages into that family, to help pay of debts and make sure they have more of the things they need. Mostly, it feels for her like there is less worry.
She was really upset about needing to use the silver string as she's a perfectionist, but we needed bows NOW for our shipping. She takes pride in her work. Tomorrow morning I have scheduled my other errands in town specifically around remembering and being able to buy in a whole chunk of the gold decorative string for her.
What have I learned about Fair Trade?
It takes thought, and number crunching, and planning, and patience, and empathy. And it makes the greatest ground in the world when we choose to buy little everyday things that are made more fairly.
Changing the World, One Bow at a Time. Grateful.
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