Location Village in Hongyuan County, Tibet
Type Training and empowerment
Amount £3,780
Background and location
This village in Hongyuan Cpunty is a semi-nomadic area. Most families income comes from their livestock. They make money by selling yaks and horses and by producing butter and cheese. There is no farming in the region because of the high altitude and cold weather so other employment options are limited. Being reliant on livestock as the main source of income is risky. Bad weather and disease frequently kill livestock and drive already poor families deeper in to poverty.
Education in the area is also a problem. For a lot of families, especially single parents, sending children to school is not an option because they need them at home to work and help earn money. This means the children have little chance of securing a better job in future and most end up depending on livestock to make a living like their parents did.
Project
Our partner is running a project to teach villagers new skills, help them earn more money and be able to send their children to school.
At the moment, if you are a Tibetan living in Rega village, Tibet and you want to buy traditional Tibetan clothes, your only affordable option is to buy bad quality, mass-produced clothes from the Chinese market. Your new clothes will wear out quickly and you will have to return again and again to buy new ones.
There are no working Tibetan tailors in Rega. Those that have the skills and knowledge to make clothes in the traditional way are old and retired. The younger generation has never learnt the skills and they have no place, equipment or teacher to learn from.
This project will change this by training 15 locals (especially from single parent families) in traditional tailoring techniques. Over a three month course, they will learn to make six different types of garments as well as how to do good quality repairs.
When the three month training course is over, the women will form a tailoring group, making and repairing clothes for the locals at a reasonable rate. This will give the women an additional income of around 20RMB (or £2) per day.
As well as teaching much needed skills, the project will benefit the whole community by making good quality clothing available cheaply. On average, it is estimated this will save the average family £400 per year … a massive amount that can be used for school fees, medicines and extra food.
The first batch of training is already underway and two of the trainees have already secured orders from a local store.