Blue Jeans and Cool Beads!

Today a team from Levi Strauss & Co., who are corporate supporters of Friends-International, arrived at our Phnom Penh headquarters on a mission. That mission? To find out more about Friends, the work we do, and in particular how our Home Based Production initiative works to support caregivers to put their children to school.

First they saw a presentation of Friends work and and followed that by participating in a discussion of some of the issues we had highlighted in that presentation. Then followed a lesson from our Home Based Production trainers in how to make beads from recycled materials. In effect this is actually better described as  ‘upcycling’, as you get a quality product from materials that would otherwise be regarded as rubbish. These beads actually do build futures, as these are the first thing that our Home Based Producers learn how to make, and they can very quickly generate income from this, income that is used to support their family into education.

We had asked the Levis team to bring scrap materials with them to make the beads, and of course being Levis, they brought along denim scraps!

Over the course of a morning (and after a lot of practice!) these were upcycled into amazing necklaces, bracelets and earrings, which really got our Home Based Team very excited about the potential for our new product range!

Also very exciting was a generous $1000 donation from the Levis team, just before they left to have lunch at Romdeng training restaurant.

Our thanks to the Levi Strauss & Co. team for a great morning with our HBP & communications teams!