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Written by Hilda
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Friday, 30 June 2006 |
No bla bla today, just a picture of the whole team wearing the shirts...
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Written by Hilda
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Monday, 26 June 2006 |
I would like to start this story telling from the life of this girl
who hails from Mindanao and who's fate has been torn away by the
religion and customs she grew up with, Virgilia. One will never fail
to notice Virgie in our workshop, because of her smiling face that
hides the sad stories of her life.
The longer time i spent with them
helped me to get to know her better. I was shocked when she told me
that she was once a muslim and she never knew his parents for she grew up with his grandparents. She told me that life in their island used to be peaceful and flourishing. Her grandparents have a big garden
with different fruits and a farm teeming with fishes. People from
different town would always pass by in their place to get free food.
Everybody is welcome to take home some specially the poor ones.She
said that she used to work in a health center in their town to help
distribute medicines. It is at this time that she realised that there
were so many poors people and who were also illitterate in mindanao.
She never imagined that there were people there that doenst even know
the exact date of their birth for they dont use calendar. They refer
date to incidents of the nature: like the season of mangoes, or season
of lanzones, or the eruption of a volcano.
She said she was one day
told she will marry a guy set up for her. They had two beautiful
kids, and her life was completed. But her stories to tell were not
only of laughters and good memories. The day his husband asked her to
work as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia her life changed totally.
Even if it is against her will to be far from her children she
accepted it for it is the law of their society. His husband assured
her that it will be good for the future of their children. She spent
years working abroad hoping that one day she will see again her
family. Luck or unluck there was a war in the middle east and all the
overseas contract worker living there were forced to go back home. It
was only at this time she discovered that his husband already
re-married a second wife (for this is allowed in their society) and
all the moneys that she has earned were used for this marriage. This incident
of her life was the saddest of all she told us, but she was telling this
story as if it wasnt hers. She said that her eldest daughter must be
18 years old now. For she never saw her children after that incident.
Because of this misfortune she opted to work again abroad to be
totally far from this painful memories. She continued working day
and night, until one day she fail and lost conscious. When she opened
her eyes she was already in hospital, she was diagnosed with leukemia,
and her employer doesnt want her to die far from her loved ones. She
was flewn back to Philippines in Manila for she never wanted to go
back to Mindanao. It is at this point of her life that her story
changed.
During her recuperation time , she said all the money she
earned abroad were used for her medications, until one day she met
their neighbor, and she said the rest is a beautiful love story that
ended up into a church wedding. She said that his husband accepted
her and all this stories thats part of her. She said that they maybe
poor but she is happy because she has a loving husband and children
that are always by her side. And before we started our lunchbreak she
ended her story by claiming, that each one of us have stories to tell
and lessons we can learn from them.
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Written by Hilda
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Tuesday, 20 June 2006 |
Finally after a month of our first production here in the workshop, we decided to do our inaguration day. We invited the families of the sewers, some of the neighbors attended too. Everybody brougth some food: chinese noodles, sea food, rice muffin cakes and cassava cakes topped with coconut. Everybody really enjoyed! While eating we watched a slideshow of the pictures i took of our sewers in action for the past weeks. We ended the party by a picture taking of all the members of the capalongas atelier wearing our own collection.
We were all very proud to be able to show what we achieved during those last weeks and we are very motivated for our next challenges (we are preparing some new products...)
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Written by Hilda
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Friday, 16 June 2006 |
Our workshop finaly started producing our first shirts!
Joe is adjusting the settings
The making of all our products starts in the hardworking hands of Joe. After a design is approved he starts by designing the pattern for the different sizes. He then cuts the fabric using this pattern. We are using a very big table (made of two doors from abandoned house that has been repaired by one of our neighbor) and he lies down all the fabric in this manner all the corners of the fabric are used. The cut fabric are then placed on our Operation rack. This rack carries the cut fabric ready for the operations. The sewer picks up the part asigned to them on the left side. During the operation Joe is always on their side to give them advises on how to sew it correctly. At the end of each day they put their finished work on the right side of the rack were they go through a quality control. Once a blouse is finished, it is forwarded to Mary our buttoner.
Virgie working
The whole concept behind our workshop is to provide a working place with a relaxed atmosphere, where the sewers will enjoy working...Plenty of nice chats and laughs, tea time breaks in the small kitchen we set up at the back: the result is beyond expectations!
There is also a girl that asked us if she could spent some times with the sewers to learn how to do: we welcomed this new apprentice with pleasure!
Apprentice
Now that the shop is working well, it is time to orgnise a little inauguration party...
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Written by Hilda
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Monday, 12 June 2006 |
Cavite is very close to the province of Batangas known for their
heavenly brewed coffees and mouthwatering pastries. Luckily i got an
invitation to attend a fiesta that day. After all its a Sunday i
deserved a break right?
For your information Philippines is often dubbed as the islands of
thousand fiesta and every fiestas has two necessary ingredients: danse and food. On our way to the city of Tanauan Batangas, we
encountered the street dancers. These are normally old woman doing a
promise to their patron saint. The dance starts from the church and
ends back in the church.
What is nice during these fiestas is that everybody is
welcome to eat at all houses even if you dont know anybody. We
started by dropping by at my friends house...after which we were
invited by their neighbor. Unfortunately my french eating habits have affected the size of my stomach, because i was only able to eat at the 4 first houses...too bad! But what is truly nice during fiesta, not only the good free food but the happy ambiance and most espeically the true warm hospitality of filipino people. Next time you drop by in any city in philippines check the calendar we might be celebrating a fiesta!
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Written by Hilda
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Friday, 09 June 2006 |
As you could read on the blog, we received our stocks of fabrics about two weeks ago. Now that the workshop is ready to run, the first job is to cut the fabric. Joe, our master cutter, is in charge of it. He is very busy those last days because he is also working on his own for an order of shcool uniforms (The schoolyear starts in June in Philippines) so he decided to work on our shirts in the morning and at night (the afternoon being used for the uniforms) so that the sewers can start working soon.
Now that the shop finaly looks like a real one, he seems very impatient to work there: I even caught him singing while he was cutting! He told me he is very happy to have found the right pattern to minimise the waste. We decided that we will try to imagine a way to recycle the left overs.
Christie, our coordinator, is now installed in her new office. She did an inventory and organised the stocks.
The sewers did a few tests and we should be able to start producing within one or two days...
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Written by Hilda
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Tuesday, 06 June 2006 |
We have spent the week cleaning our new worskhop, finding furnitures left and right(friends and neighbors donated tables and chairs..etc) and we finally moved in.
The Facade of our Workshop
The next thing was finding the sewing machines, as we have very limited budget (hello calling out for sponsors....) we opted for second hand sewing machines. Most of which we have no chance of using. We have the chance nevertheless that one of our neighbor of is a sewing machine mechanic who helped us in putting them back in their good running condition....
After one week of work, we are finally on the track: machines are in place, furnitures, electric fans and we even built a stockroom and a big cutting table. We also installed circuit breaker to resist to the strong voltage requirement of sewing machines as protection. Fortunately another neighbor is an expert electrician (what a coincidence!).
The Sewers Testing the Machines
My father is an artist, and he gave us one of his paintings to decorate the workshop. We finished it by adding plants and flowers. While buying plants and planter box we fortunately met a old man making planter boxes out of recyled truck wheels.We had the opportunity to see how he made them, fortunately I dont have my camera with me.
Well at the end of the day we are finally ready to start our operation.
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Written by Hilda
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Friday, 02 June 2006 |
It's been one month now since I arrived in Philippines and during the past weeks we have been very busy: One of the major objective of Capalongas is to create a sewing workshop that will provide means of income to dressmakers without jobs in the community of Dasmarinas (in the suburbs of Manila). This workshop will be use to produce Capalongas collection and also to accept jobs for local orders, like school uniforms. As you can imagine putting up a workshop from scratches and with limited budget is not an easy thing to do.
The entrance to Dasmarinas subdivision
When I left Philippines last year we put up a "embryo" of this workshop. Which means dressmakers that are ready to invest in this project, head of the shop is an experienced tailor and of course the place we had was a squatted house, with electricity connected from the neighbor and machines were borrowed from the neighbors left and right. In fact, they were all second hand assembled from different pieces. The positive thing about this was that the prototype and the production test made proved to be of high quality finishing.
The former workshop
Unfortunately during my six months absence in Philippines due to lack of income, the machines were either sold, or pawned. And to top it all that, the owner of the squatted house our head of the shop to leave the place. We imagined to have better workshop but not in such a short notice! I thus spent these last weeks to find a new place to rent: what we found easily were the ones in such a pitiful condition (smashed doors, broken down roofs, no water nor electricity… etc). After several weeks of searching, we finally found a place ideal for our workshop. There are still some work to be done: arranging the place, buying the machines and conditioning them. Fortunately we had anticipated this kind of problems and we had voluntarily established a very broad planning: these small risks will not thus have any impact on the date of release of our collection.
The house we refused
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Written by Jean-Emmanuel
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Monday, 29 May 2006 |
On Saturday night there was a Fair Trade show in Toulon. Marie-Laure and Nathalie from Ecco Mondo (www.eccomondo.com) and Aline from Naturuma (12 av Général de Gaule, Hyères) organised a fashion show and kindly proposed us to insert a few of our prototypes in the show: click below to see the video!
The second part of the show was a screening and discussion around the excellent movie by fokus21 (fokus.free.fr) about small producers from the sierra: a must see to understand the impact of Fair Trade on small producers.
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Written by Hilda
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Wednesday, 24 May 2006 |
The blistering heat of summer in Philippines (from March to May) makes me feel a little bit bad to leave France. Notwithstanding, summer is still my favorite season because of all the good food i can eat during this time! The dirty ice-cream they sell on the street: 3 scoops for 5 pesos be it mango, chocoloate or coconut, a real knockout to beat the summer heat. Adored by kids and adults as well!
Well speaking about mangoes, on my way back home I happened to see a street vendor selling my favorite kind of mango (probably exist only in Asia) the "pahutan". Its a very small mango (the entire mango measures roughly 6 centimeters)but they smell and taste so sweet. I would admit that summer season in Philippines you will encounter tons of fruits of your choice and its quite hard to resist. Thats the reason why every night i go back home with 2 or 3 kilos of different kinds of fruits: quite heavy to carry but really yummy on the tummy!
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