After 15+ years in the corporate world, working for multinational companies, end of 2016 I decided to take a break and to go to volunteer in a small school in the south of Cambodia. Nature is completely polluted by the plastic bags that finish in the sea. According to the Ministry of Environment, more than 10 millions of plastic bags are used every day in the city of Phnom Penh in 2016. Knowing that 1 plastic bag takes up to 1000 years to decompose in the landfiles, our mother nature desperately needs us and now !
I discussed about this topic with the mothers of my students and when I asked them what could I do to help them improve their daily lifes? Their answer was: “Give us a job, teach us that we can work and earn a living”.
This is how the idea came up !
Let’s combine two projects: Women Empowerment & Environment protection !
I came back to Switzerland in January 2017 and founded a Swiss non-profit organisation IWA Kep – International Women Association that supports disadvantaged women by offering them a training in manual and creative trades such as sewing and crocheting plastic bags. Our mission is to protect the environment by collecting and recycling plastic bags waste to make bags, baskets, mats, purses, etc. We provide financial and human resources to improve the daily lives of women and their children through education and empowerment.
I put in place a successful crowdfunding project in Switzerland and took a decision to go to live in Cambodia and implement IWA Kep on a local level. Not easy to be an entrepreneur in a country where priorities are food and shelter first… but with good intentions came first good results.
Started with 3 sisters who decided to trust me (not immediately my project…) we opened our plastic bag crochet Workshop in Kep Province in October 2017. We trained and hired up to 10 women, and we put in place plastic bags collection points at local farms, villages, businesses and start to raise awareness about plastic pollution. Our first customers start to visit our Workshop and discover our recycled items, we were so proud of us and our achievements !
In Jan 2019, our project will celebrate 2 years and since 2017 we improved lifes of more than 15 families, supported more than 60 people in our village, run a weekly workshop and a shop in Cambodia, delivered “Les Magasins du Monde” in Switzerland, and since a couple of months we deliver our items all around Europe throuh our online shop on ETSY.
Today, I encourage everyone to be crazy enough to go out of his confort zone and see what life offers you as opportunity to grow as this project changed my life and brought joy & happiness to so many people around me. We can do it, we just need to go for it.
Love to all of you who took time to read my story and the one of IWA Kep in Cambodia.
Melissa
