Robes and Flyers

Since I am leaving next week, my projects around the store have been quite minimal. I have been researching the PDA group in Thailand mostly. I finished the folder for Kelly, which contains all the information about PDA. I then went back through the folder and highlighted all of the important information. This will be helpful when we visit them to go through the folder and reread about the projects they have been working on.

I also took measurements of a silk robe that Kelly has previously purchased from Thailand. The DP group has already started working on the robes, however are in need of some help! I'm taking the measurements for a reference.

The measurements are:

Body: 35" long, 25" wide

Sleeves: 9 1/2" long, 10 3/4" wide

Inside Tie: 12"

Outside Sash: 1 1/2" wide, 70" long

The sleeves may seem a little wide, but that is the look we are going for. We want the kimono style sleeve. Kelly and I will be picking out the fabric for the robes when we are over there.

Earlier today I created a flyer for upcoming events. The flyer is promoting our Middle Eastern trip. You can click on the image above to enlarge it!

Event Tonight

Stop Child Trafficking Now: Ending the Exploitation

When: Sat., Aug. 21, 7-10:30 p.m.
Price: Free, but donations accepted
www.unitedagainstcontemporarytrafficking.blogspot.com

When's the last time you did something to benefit another? Feel like its been a little too long? Well come to Midtown Grill this Saturday and raise your voice to Stop Child Trafficking Now! This charity event will be featuring the artistic talents of Jamie Nichole, Chris Jerles and Robert Newport of Borrow Tomorrow, and Adam Nevins of Common Ground. It will also be having a silent auction and survivor sharing their past experience. There will also be some jewelery and other items for sale made by trafficking survivors from locally owned The Village Experience and Peace, Love, Bling. United Against Contemporary Trafficking (U-ACT) is a grassroots organization that supports and assists local and international individuals and organizations in their fight against human trafficking. Come on, support these guys!

• Midtown Grille and Lounge

• BROAD RIPPLE 815 E Westfield Blvd
• Phone: (317) 253-1141
• www.midtown-grill.com
• (based on 1 user review)
• 
  
• This is where I will be at tonight! The Village Experience will have a booth with are freshwater pearl necklaces and earrings, all made my sex-trafficking survivors!

PDA

PDA is short for the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), not Public Display of Affection (at least not in this case). The Population and Community Development was started in 1974 and is now considered as Thailand's most diverse Non-Government Organizations (NGO). The programs under the PDA are based on the belief that local people are best suited to shape and sustain their own development. When PDA first started they specifically focused on family planning in urban and rural areas of Thailand, due to the lack of knowledge and access to these types of services. Statistics have shown that between 1974 and 2006, PDA helped to lower the average number of children per household from 7 to 1.2, as well as, the national population growth rate from 3.3% to 0.5%.

Today, PDA focuses on much more than family planning. They have started various initiatives related health care, HIV/AIDS education and prevention, water resource development and sanitation, income-generation, environmental conservation, promotion of small-scale rural enterprise programs, gender equality, youth development, and democracy promotion. Most recently, PDA has aggressively approached the problem of rural poverty by empowering the poor through the Village Development Partnership, which establishes a community-owned Village Development Bank for the purpose of microcredit.

I have been researching a lot about the PDA, because Kelly and I will be visiting some of their projects in September. Most of their projects are located in the Northeast of Thailand, which is considered the poorest area. I could go on and on about their organization, however I'll stop here. Here is the link if you would like to read more about the fascinating projects PDA has started in Thailand. http://pda.or.th/

Along with reading up on the various initiatives of PDA, I have been researching "kimono sleeve robes." When I am at the orphanage, I will be helping to construct these types of robes. I've been looking for a pattern of some sort, but I haven't found one. I've looked online for hours and traveled to Joanne's where I ended up empty handed. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do?

Reset Floor

Here are some pictures of our latest floor set!

ServLife Products

Today, we received some new products from ServLife such as, necklaces, earrings, scrapbooks, soaps, gift boxes and scarves. All of the products were handmade in Nepal, India. My camera battery was very low, so I was only able to snap a couple pictures!

Shots, shots, shots

The title of my blog reminds me of Laura Jay….hahaha. Laura, do you know why????

I had my appointment with Dr. Jeffrey Jones today. Kelly referred me to Dr. Jones for my any vaccines I would need for Thailand. I ended up having to get three shots. I had a Hepatitis A, Typhoid and Tetanus shot. Both the Hepatitis A and Typhoid shots were recommended for my trip. I was just due for a tetanus shot so I figured what the heck, I might as well get all three.

The only problem with this is that I LOATHE shots. I'll admit I am such a baby when it comes to these kind of things. I mean, I can't really help the fact that I have a weak stomach and I tend to get nauseous easily. Just the thought of any sharp object inserted into my body causing pain tends to make squeal.

Obviously, I went through with the shots anyway, but now I am feeling the slight side effects. I haven't felt sick at all. The only discomfort is the pain and soreness in my arms. It seriously feels like someone struck each of my upper arms with a wooden bat. It's hard to even lift them to a 45 degree angle. Sadly, the nurse said they will be sore for a couple of days:/

I just took some Excedrin PM. Hopefully, the pain will go away and I'll get a much needed nights rest. I can't wait to sleep….

Night friends.

Shop for a Cause

The flyer for our upcoming event on September 2nd!

Baan Tharn Namchai

I found this video on YouTube of the orphanage that I will be staying at for 2 weeks!

Discovery

Since I have previously posted about "importing", you already have a pretty good idea of how I feel about the topic. For the most part, it's way tooooooo complicated and always makes my head hurt! But, today I made a refreshing discovery about the AGOA.

As I was researching importing wool scarves and headbands, I came across a provision under the AGOA. The AGOA is the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The provision, labeled as Category 9, refers to handloomed/handmade/folklore articles/ethnic printed fabrics. The agoa.gov website states, "AGOA provides duty- and quota-free benefits for handloomed, handmade, folklore articles, or ethnic printed fabrics, made in beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries. This provision is known as "Category 9". In Executive Order 13191, the President authorized CITA, after consultation with the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, to consult with beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries and to determine which, if any, particular textile and apparel goods shall be treated as being handloomed, handmade, folklore articles or ethnic printed fabrics.

As of August 2009, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia have been approved under the hand-loomed and the handmade provisions of Category 9."

If this is true, then the scarves and headbands we plan on ordering for the fall will be duty-free. Ahhhh….I like the sounds of that!

Enough of work----I'm SO excited for tonight because Mohey, owner of The Egyptian Cafe and Hooka Bar (one of my absolute favorite restaurants in Broad Ripple), is cooking dinner for some of us. Kelly says he is a phenomenal cook and I have no reservations whatsoever since he cooks all the food at the cafe. Nonetheless, it should be a fabulous friday night….cheers!

The feeling of completion

Ahhhh….I love the feeling of completion. I finally finished switching the website over. I'd say it looks pretty good. There are still a few things that need work, but only our "website guy" can fix. He works on our website only part-time so it may be awhile till we actually get it truly finished. Here is the website link for a quick look if your interested, experiencethevillage.com/store

We have received some copies of the catalog and it looks sooooo good! I mean not to toot my own horn (toot, toot), but it looks great. It's a piece of work that I actually feel incredibly proud of. We've been talking about doing this catalog from day one and the fact that it is already completed, with hard copies in hand, kind of makes it almost indescribable. I can't wait to show all my friends!

On another note, a few of Anne's friends have flown in from New York City for her wedding on Saturday. Tomorrow they are coming by the store to look at the catalog and are actually going to take a few samples back to the their buyers. This could possible be our first account….cross your fingers for us that the buyers will like our products and want to place an order!! I'm keeping the company name private for right now. Although, I'll keep you posted if anything happens:)

Maybe now I'll be able to sleep better that all this is finished………mmmmm no, probably not. That's just wishful thinking haha

Peace friends-

Movies

Sooo…..I never thought I would actually EVER do this, but somehow I managed to find the courage to go to the movies by myself. Come to find out and beautifully stated by my b.f.f. B Brittanie, "It's liberating." I went to see "Dinner with Schmucks." Absolutely hyyysstterrriicaall. I laughed throughout the entire movie. I did find it strange to be laughing by myself with no one around me. Fortunately, that strange feeling did not last that long. Since I typically have Tuesdays off from TVE, I decided that I'm going to go to the movies again. I really have nothing else to do and you can hardly beat it when it's only $5 for the matinee. So friends I am going to go see, Charlie St. Cloud. I heard it is a bit of a tear jerker. To be honest, I don't mind a nice cry once in awhile=)

Enjoy your Tuesday!

Hand Blown Glass

Last Saturday Kelly flew back home from Kenya. She brought several things back with her. These mugs and wine glasses were definitely my favorite! They are all made out of recycled glass and hand blown. Customers seem to really like them as well!

Website Madness

Now that the catalog is done, I am starting to work on the back end of the website. The back end is turning the "store website" into solely a "wholesale ordering website". Does that make sense? Essentially, when we start wholesaling to other retailers, the buyers of the stores will be able to login in to the website and order. Regular customers will not be able to order from the website. It is common for wholesale distributors to only allow buyers to order from the website.

Anne has taught me how to work the back end of the website. Let me tell you….it is NOT easy by any means! I am taking down all of the old pictures and products and putting up the items we are going to wholesale i.e., beach bags, pearls, wine totes, dresses, etc… I have to enlarge the pictures, upload them to the website, upload all of the fabric swatches, label all pictures, put the color swatches in alphabetically order, input all the details about the products, and so on. It takes forever to upload anything and every time you change something you have to hit the "save" button. It's incredibly time consuming and repetitive, but for some reason I like it. I was going to try and take some screen shots, except I forgot the command to do so. If you would like to see what I have done so far, you can visit the website at http://www.experiencethevillage.com/store/! That's all for now. I have a special visitor arriving soon=) Have a great weekend everyone!

F.L.I.G.H.T

Exciting news here……..I bought my plane ticket to Thailand!!! This past Tuesday I decided that I will be leaving in almost a month, so I probably should buy my ticket. I found a plane ticket for just over $1200, leaving from Detroit. I have a layover in Tokyo, where I will actually meet up with Kelly. Kind of strange that were meeting in Tokyo, but somehow we are!

Fundraising update!

I have raised over $1500. Soooooo close to my goal!! I know of a few donations that are going to trickle in. All upcoming donations will help pay for my plane ticket. Thanks again to all that have donated. I genuinely appreciate all of the support and donations I have received. I am incredibly blessed to have such amazing people in my life.

Pages

Opening letter

Back cover of catalog

Recycled Paper Necklace (from Kenya) layout

African Print Dress (from Kenya) layout

Beach Bag (from Kenya) layout

Bottle Openers from Kenya

Freshwater Pearl Necklaces from Thailand

Large Raffia Hat from Kenya

Front cover of catalog

Here are some examples of the pages from the catalog! I was responsible for designing the catalog cover and the overall design layout. Molly Longest was responsible for editing all of the photos. Anne and Emily supervised and edited the catalog. If you look close to the fabric swatches, you can see the color names that Kelsie and I came up with---they're cute! I created all the pages in Photoshop, then saved them as a JPG and placed them into InDesign. The entire catalog is 26 pages from front to back. The catalogs will be ready to be picked up on Monday the 9th. I can hardly wait. Being held responsible for such a huge project at TVE has truly been an amazing experience.

It's official….

It's official….I am absolutely terrible at keeping up with my blog. It has been 15 days since my last blog. It's been extremely difficult juggling both jobs, having friends come visit and planning my trip to Thailand. Meanwhile, trying to keep myself sane so I can make it through each week. I've heard the best way to keep up with blogging is to set a time aside each day to blog. However, with my schedule always changing and having the worst sleep patterns, I find it hard to set the same time aside each day to blog. I've actually started to take Melatonin to help with my irregular sleep patterns. This week I've actually started to notice a difference. Not sure if it is the medicine or the fact that I haven't slept in 2 weeks….

Anyways, enough of my complaining. Work at TVE has been incredible busy. Ever since the photo shoot, I have been working on the catalog. Literally, I have not done anything else besides work on the catalog. As a result of my focus, I've managed to finish the catalog. I copied all the Photoshop files and the InDesign file to a hard drive, Anne then took it to Triangle printing this past Monday. We actually received a sample copy yesterday! The color was off because I made all the files in RGB instead of CMYK. There was also some spelling errors. Besides some minor corrections the catalog is set and ready to go!

(I actually started this post yesterday and didn't have time to finish it…..gaaawwwddd, I'm terrible!!!)