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>View discussions about this entry País: Cambodia
Organization: Carpets for Communities
Sector Focus - Business
Year the initative began (yyyy) - 2005
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Project URL: http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence? - Instant intervention into child trafficking & labour by empowering mothers to earn a steady income from home & return their children to school, giving us time to work with the families in a participatory fashion towards exiting the cycle of poverty.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field? - We eliminate the normal time lag between identifying a family or children at risk of trafficking or who are working and eliminating that risk / getting the child out of labour and back to school.
Identifying a family to having a child back in school and the mother receiving their first income can take as little as 24 hours. We remove the economic incentive (by providing the mothers with simple work they can do from home) with our proven market based, financially self sustaining social business model. Our first product is rugs made of recycled cotton and sold internationally. Importantly we then work with the families though a 4 step participatory development process that sees them pay off their debts, learn financial management, participate in community building, design their own support programs, receive training, send there kids to non formal education (as well as formal schooling), save to improve their family's situation, plan their futures and progress from carpet making to a self determined form of income generation with the assistance of micro loans, training, market access support and general project staff support. Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing? - We survey children and families and take referrals to find children at high risk who are bound to economically supporting their families. We interview the mother and check their situation against entry criteria (# children out of school, income, debt, financial stability, housing, health and most importantly the children's level of risk).
They sign a contract to have the children in school and not working if they want to earn money making carpets. We then train them (takes about 30 mins) and give them the materials and simple tools to start working. On the same day the children are enrolled back in school (sometimes for the first time) and teachers are trained to use the monitoring system. Social workers then work with the family using a participatory development process. How do you plan to grow your innovation? - 1. Scale up production and distribution to commercial levels through securing funding and national wholesalers in order to fully access the mainstream market
2. Diversify products and exit options for families 3. Replicate in other provinces and countries 4. Publish tool kits and proliferate the model globally (through training, consulting, speaking, partnerships and excellent PR) Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them? - By approaching organisations when we have a need and asking if they are willing to work together. Most are excited to help.
Cambodian Hope Organisation - Cambodian Partner Organisation help to manage the local staff and finances. Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact. - After the excellent results with the test cases of 13 families and 39 children we now aim to eliminate the need for child begging, labour and trafficking at the border town of Poipet, Cambodia and then to proliferate the model globally.
How many people have you served or plan to serve? - In the first phase (set up) and the second (proof of concept) we have served over 100 children and 20 families. In the third phase (expansion) we plan of serving 500 families and approximately 2500 children at any given time with hundreds more families flowing through the program. Diversification and replication can only lead to an exponential increase in the number of people that we can reach.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation? - Initial baseline studies (sample size of 500) and other studies on child labour and trafficking in the area are measured against entry surveys, regular qualitative interviews, progress surveys and exit surveys conducted with participating families. These allow us to measure various improvements in the situations of participating families. These include:
A. On the Family level: B. On the replication level: C. On the policy level:
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation? - Predominantly children of school age and mothers in extremely poor families ( currently in the border town of Poipet, Cambodia), who are susceptible to the lures of child labour and trafficking as perceived ways to abate their poverty.
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)? - Initially for phase 1 we solicited funding through various funding agencies, raised funds and use profits from carpet sales. Currently at the end of phase 2 we are using only the revenue from carpets sales to fund all operations. In order to expand for phase 3 we are currently soliciting more funds.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization - Annual budget;
Annual revenue generated; Number of staff: STAFF 3 Khmer (Cambodian) staff. BUDGET REVENUE GENERATED What is the potential demand for your innovation? - For our current product our market research and feedback from industry professionals clearly indicates huge potential demand. We have already been told that if we can reach commercial scale then one distributor will buy enough rugs to support 500 families.
Taking this level of demand outside of Australia to the other western markets alone would allow us to work with thousands of families at any one time. Beyond that we can apply the model to countless products and eventually to all products. With the increase in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and ethical consumption the demand for products made in this way for the mainstream market continues to rise. What are the main barriers to financial sustainability? - We have already achieved this at small scale.
At large scale the main barrier is again selling the products. What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. - See You Tube video. I wanted to help the kids get back to school and met with their mum's to ask how we could help. They wanted work and after some trial and error, returning to Uni to study international development and lots of trips to Cambodia we have arrived here.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material - Committed to scale.
Contact Information:
David Bacon
Founding Director Carpets for Communities (Social Business) Discussions about this entry
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Carpets for Communities - Empowering poor mothers to free their chilren through connecting them with market opportunities
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On July 16, 2008, the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Competition and would like to pass on the following feedback for your entry. Thank you for applying and for your hard work in the field. We are excited to archive your entry to serve as a leading solution for the worldwide community of innovators who are exposing, confronting and ending modern day slavery. We wish you continued luck with your sustainable, innovative, and socially impactful initiatives.
All the best, The Changemakers Team
“This effort is impressive in that it works both to identify children at risk and help them get back into school. It has demonstrated a strong impact on the community level, and has the potential to spread to a global market. It would be great to connect them with a strong marketing director and team.”
“This innovation works to support not one but two vulnerable populations—children and women, and the results are immediate! Once “Carpets” gets involved, the child returns to school and the family has a viable source of income in 24 hours. Fantastic!”
“We look forward to connecting Carpets for Communities with RugMark. Both projects are leading the field in innovation and social impact and would benefit from this partnership opportunity.”
- Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Judges: United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking, International Organization for Migration, Design Within Reach, Vital Voices Global Partnership, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Humanity United.
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The Changemakers Team
Ashoka's Changemakers
Wow! I can hardly believe that we won! All the project were so inspiring!
Thank you to everyone who supported and voted for the Carpets for Communities project! You've helped us change the lives of more children forever.
This really is the beginning of a new chapter or us. We are setting up independently in Cambodia and we are now ready to expand to many many more families and children!
We are only small at the moment and we welcome all kids of support from advice to funding to help us scale up and start replicating.
Our main needs are:
- Sales outlets
- Funding (about $140,000 to expand to 500 families over three years)
- Patrons, Board Members and Advisors
- Coaching and Mentoring
- Volunteers in Cambodia and in export locations (US, UK, Australia etc)
Thank you again everyone!
David,
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Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
Email: davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
Mobile: +61 (0)424 511 155
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
Dear Friend
Your work is very effective and what you are working for children that also remarkable. Onbehalf of our organization I wish to congratulate to become fellow.
Nice entry,
With best wishes
Ameen Charles
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Rights with Dignity
Hey David
Am so Impressed by your programme its extremely practical and innovative. I have a few additional suggestions
1. Is it possible for your programme to involve Policy makers now at small scale, the idea here is to encourage all round ownership e.g imagine a situation where you need to lobby for a policy that will ensure that all profits gotten from your production goes directly to the targeted beneficiary, or even tax holidays for vulnerable communities, If the policy makers are not involved now when you are at small scale, It might be hard for you to convince them of Key challenges when you are a big shot corporation.( Hope it makes sense)
2. What about women who are interested in the Programme but want to do other income generating activities what short term plans do you have for them?
3. Your target beneficiaries are mostly women and Children what about Vulnerable male members of the same community...say single fathers???
Otherwise am too impressed.
Regards
Dorothy
Keep up with the good work
Hi Dorothy,
1.
Currently we are focusing all our efforts on making the economic engine work as well as possible and are running a very lean organisation. Apart from working with local leaders and village councils and occasional work with ministries (on things like import and export issues) we don't really have the capacity to work with higher level government. It's something that we are planning on as we grow and have some further resources to direct that way. In fact we are moving our admin office in order to be able to access those networks and will be training up a new manager to work on such higher level things.
Specifically regarding the profits, we employ staff to ensure the participants receive it directly but as we replicate I can see that it may be more challenging. There will definitely be a need to have a good system in place then and we will have to get advice on developing that as it becomes relevant.
2.
Part of our Phase III expansion plans include (as well as expanding to 400 or 500 families) diversifying our products and developing other options for families. You can read the special report that outlines these plans here: http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org/support-expansion-phase
This phase however is going to take some funding and so we are pulling out all the stops for the next 6 months to raise money and access grants for this.
3.
We don't ever exclude men but simply focus on women for the well known reasons that they (generally) make better choices for their families. More importantly we have never come accross a single father family, only single mother or single grandmother families. Many of the women's husbands help them out with the production.
As an aside, some interviews that we did showed that some of the men were surprised that their wives could be useful. This type of work is really important in challenging these views.
Does that answer your questions?
Kind regards,
David
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Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
davidbacon@carpetsorcommunities.org
goodluck
Dear David, Good luck with the competition. I vote for your project.
This is one of the greatest idea worth supporting. Good luck for your endeavors.
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George
Hi David,
Here is another entry that I thought you might be interested in:
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/8576
Perhaps there are some ways that you could work together.
Keep up the great work!
Dana Frasz
Ashoka's Changemakers
As far as expanding into US channels, there is a group called 10,000 villages that operates in US and Canada. www.tenthousandvillages.com. I think they would be very supportive of your work, as they are a fair-trade retail store. Also, what about working the Christian network in the US (since you are partially funded by a Christian organization in Cambodia). Although perhaps a stretch, there is a resurgence in the states of social and environmental justice evangelicals (they are fairly well-funded and motivated). The grassroots viral (free) advertising available on these extensive blogging networks is probably significant.
Good luck,
Brad
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Portland State University, Master of International Management, current student
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Portland State University, Master of International Management, current student
Hi David,
Have you heard of Rugmark? They've submitted an entry into the competition. Perhaps you could connect with them and come up with some ways that you can work together. Check out their entry here: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/8431
Keep up the great work!
Dana
Hi Dana,
Yeah we have looked into rugmark a little and will do further. I have a volunteer who is helping us get fair trade certified and who will look more into how we could work with rug mark some more.
I was surprised to see their entry as i know the founder is already an Ashoka fellow and didn't realise they would be eligible. They do great work and make for stiff competition!
I really like this completion becsaue you can't help but to admire and support your competitors!
Cheers,
David
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Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
www.carpetsforcommunities.org
davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
Hello,
I was absolutely thrilled to read your entry about the work you are doing. Your program has all of the elements to make real impact on children's lives:
1) Clear goals
2) Clear methodology
3) Clear target beneficiary number
4) Starting small and scaling out not only in beneficiaries but in services offered/ markets
5) Action-oriented combined with policy solutions
6) Empowering mothers with self-sustainable tools
This is very impressive and you are clearly making a positive and direct impact in the lives of many young children and families.
I think two things could make your proposal even stronger and more outstanding than it already is-
1) Developing a clear monitoring and evaluaiton plan (how will you track the children and families, and for what period of time, what are benchmarks and indicators you will use to determine the "success" of intervening with a family, and what baseline statistics of families and children are you collecting when you begin to work with mothers and children?
2) Elucidate the other types of products that you would like to expand to beyond rugs. I think that you correctly identify that the market absorptive capacity will be limited at some point, and in order to continue to scale-out your program and be a sutainable program you will need to expand to other products that the local and international market can absorb. It would be great to at least elucidate a market analysis plan to identify what these other markets may be, and consider large companies such as the Nike Foundation and others that are now giving large grants to such initiatives and partnering in marketing.
I wish you the best of luck and hope that you continue this fabulous work!
Jessica
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Gender Equality and Human Trafficking Specialist
Thanks for your excellent feedback Jessica!
Regarding measurement:
I agree that we should have a standard tracking period for exit families, although it's difficult in border towns such this one which has by nature a relatively transient population.
We could also have more complex benchmarks for success with the families. We still have simple ones (such as "demonstrated financial stability" and "kids attendance rate at school > 85%") but these should certainly be updated to reflect the more extensive plans that we now have for exiting the program, empowerment of the women and the participatory process.
We have taken an extensive baseline surveys, take entry surveys, and take progress surveys measuring various areas such as income, financial literacy, and health, attitudes to trafficking and children's education, education levels achieved, and women's empowerment. We are also starting to track participant’s attitudes to their futures among other qualitative family outcomes. I'll be working on this further when I go over in August.
Regarding Products:
We are currently looking into silk production, dying and weaving (as it have excellent local markets) as well as other uses for the scrap cotton that we use for the carpets. Our partnership with CHO also gives us access to their agriculture programs for the rural participants. Researching and trialling these and other options are an important part of what we will be focusing on over the next 12 months and we are currently working with Artisans Association of Cambodia to this end.
If you could point us toward any other grant makers as well that would be much appreciated, we are just putting together our proposals for a round of grant applications to support our expansion plans.
We really value your advice as we have done this without any support from experts. If you would be interested in on going coaching or feedback I would be happy for you to email me at the address below.
Kind Regards,
David
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Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of poverty"
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
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Founder
Carpets for Communities (Cambodia)
Email: davidbacon@carpetsforcommunities.org
Mobile: +61 (0)424 511 155
http://www.carpetsforcommunities.org
"Empowering Mothers to break the cycle of Poverty"
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