Our regular readers will know that we love it when the Colourful Journey travellers visit. We are finalising the dates for this year’s journey- stay posted! Last year we were lucky enough to ...
This is New Year in some countries but not Nepal where it is still 2068. But we will still think about the year that we have had and our plans for 2012. One exciting thing was we had a talk with Pr...
After a couple of posts about our learning, we thought it would be interesting for people to hear about our teaching! Twice this year, we have taught groups of women who have been touring Eastern Ne...
Not so many words but some photos of our graduation. We were so lucky that Arcadia, Terry, Wyoming Wendy, Cynthia, Angie, Cathy, Sacha, Louise and Bishnu were there to see our proud time. We are ve...
The last few days have been so special and we feel very loved. Not only by our sister Cynthia and all our visitors in the group, but also by people a long way away who have been so generous to us an...
Cynthia Tinapple of Polymer Clay Daily spent two days training some of the ladies in a variety of techniques and projects. It was a wonderful time and this is a translation by Kopila of what ...
Here is some wonderful news for our Australian friends (we hope we can go international next year!). The indefatigueable Kate Rotherham had the fantastic idea of getting some Christmas cards made us...
Some good things have been happening for several of the ladies who attended our training last year. Cases have slowly been resolved with compensation paid and this has enabled some of them to establ...
On 17th September Monday evening at 6.23 o’clock we were terrified by the earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was in eastern Nepal in the hills of Taplejung and Sikkim (I...
It has been quite a whirl since our Exhibition in Sydney which was a great success. People loved our jewelry and the response was almost overwhelming. Robin, the curator of the gallery has kept man...
They say a picture speaks a thousand words so we calculated that a few will get us up to date with blog entries!? Many of us here were very preoccupied with getting ready for our Sydney Exhibition at...
For those in Australia, there will be an exhibition of some of the ladies’ work at Flourish Arts Gallery in Birchgrove on two weekends, July 16/17 and July 23/24. Flourish Arts is run by a wond...
Kalpana and Kopila Namaste, this is Kopila writing the blog this time!! I am very excited about this one. I remember the day when Kalpana’s father came to me with tears and pain. She was thrown away...
Nepal is a country where a lot of talk happens. That talk is not always followed by constructive action and the area of women’s rights and justice for women is certainly an area like this. Laws to pr...
Samunnat exists to support women who are victims of violence or vulnerable to violence. We are often approached by people with a huge range of problems but can’t always help given our tiny resources....
Nepali New Year takes place in Baisakh which is in April. And now it is the year 2068. HAPPY NEW YEAR. The ladies wanted to come in and work but how can you work on New Year’s Day? And the days be...
Intrepid travelers Some of our regular readers will know that last month, a group of hardy Australian travellers, ranging in age from 50-ish to 79-ish, travelled around some less travelled eastern re...
Bringing harmony to our room Most of us know that there is nothing like a good “sorting out” when life threatens to get overwhelming and this is no difference here in Birtamod. We have t...
This year we had 3 weeks of very cold weather so we have to drink few cups of tea daily in our office and had to buy warm clothes. Now this is February and the climate is not too cold nor hot.We stil...
The last weeks of November and December were times of mixed feelings for everyone at Samunnat. There were times of great excitement but also times of sadness as our oldest “didi” (the Au...
A lot has happened at Samunnat lately and we promise a good entry to keep everyone up to date. While you are waiting here are some photos of the Nativity sets that the ladies have been working on. Wh...
Tihar - Dog Days Our observant blog readers will note that it isn’t long ago that we celebrated another festival. We are coming to the end of a very festivalled season. We had barely recovered from ...
BUY HERE Since we have had many requests about producing “loose” beads for those who make their own jewellery, we are very excited to announce the arrival of the Dotty Didis. Didi is “big sister” in ...
The run up to Dashain, one of Nepal’s two biggest festivals, has been frantically busy. (Mind you, this is being written by the ultimate Christmas whinger!) We finally sent off our 300 bahini beads t...
The other day a couple of us were at the Jagadamba fabric store trying to buy some of Nepal’s national fabric, dakka, which we use to make aprons, potholders and oven mitts. It is used for the hill l...
Recently, we celebrated Biswakarma, an annual festival where all the Hindus in Nepal do puja for anything mechanical. Nepalis are incredible at getting broken down things going again but there are oc...
The other morning, before it was really light, two men arrived on Kopila’s doorstep. One of them was concerned about his daughter-in-law who was being kept locked in a room in a tragic family situati...
One of the things we have focused on from the start with Samunnat is sustainability. Much of what Samunnat does is ably handled by the locals. The education arm, the legal assistance, the counselling...
One of the things we do regularly is send new polymer jewelry designs to ACP, our Fair Trade partners, to see if there are new items they’d like to buy. It is always rather nerve wracking and we wait...
The problem with having a bit of a gap between blog entries means there is invariably a lot to say and we know you don’t have hours to spend catching up with our doings. Depending on what our fairy b...
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