WEFTshop aims to support creative industry capable of delivering sustainable income while also promoting traditional textile skills.
Weftshop works with individual women and women’s groups on the Thai-Burma border to develop marketable textiles and handmade products.
By purchasing and commissioning products ,Weftshop supports refugee women and their families to buy nutritious food, medicine and other essential household goods so important to achieving a basic standard of living.
Migrant Women:
Yami and Noe Thee began working with WEFTshop after they attended a product development workshop in 2009.WEFTshop works with individual women assisting them to become more established financially and in their skill base . By supporting them we are experiencing a ripple effect. They are able to purchase textiles from and employ people in their own communities in Thailand and Burma. Our intention is to support them to persue their own vision for improvement within their communities.You can read more about them in the following pages, they are inspirational people.
Organisations:
WEFTshop run product development and marketing workshops with the support of women’s groups such as WEAVE (Women’s Education for and Advancement and Empowerment) on the Thai-Burma border. The workshops help refugee and displaced women artisans develop the skills and knowledge needed to create products suitable for selling to a western market.WEFTshop also orders a range of shawls and scarves through WEAVE. We order exclusive colour and pattern combinations that are then made by Karen Refugee women on the Thai-Burma border. As security issues make it difficult for WEFTshop to access the women in the camps working with WEAVE helps us to support these women and also support their community based organisation.
WEFTshop orders Karen sarongs,which are used to make girls dresses and sold as fabric lengths from KWO( Karen Women Organisation).These sarongs are woven in the refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border in traditional Karen patterns. By ordering through KWO we are able to provide income to women in the camps whom we could not otherwise access and also supporting KWO which is a community run organisation.
WEFTshop also works with Kachin women and KWAT (Kachin Women’s Assosiation Thailand). WEFTshop runs product development workshops with Kachin women as part of their IGP (Income Generation Project) and they produce some of our lovely girls dresses and our best selling bags. Fabric used to produce these products are traditional Kachin sarongs which are produced by women within Burma. WEFTshop by working with KWAT is therefore able to help provide income to these women.
Weftshop Gallery