The Little Feet Company - April 2009

The Little Feet Company April Update!

Happy Spring!

The Little Feet Company has had our busiest month in April, and would like to thank everyone for all of your support!

This month in Vietnam everything is changing the sun is finally here and after surviving my first rainy season I couldn't be happier to see it.

At the beginning of the month I travelled up to Hanoi to source some new products for the website and I came back with some beautiful new items including, this great hand embroidered waterproof beach bag - it is the ideal way of keeping your wet bikini away from everything else in your bag. it is made from 100% thick cotton and lined with a waterproof lining. Ideal for your summer holidays!

We also found this great sock bag! This makes a great Fair Trade Gift, It a beautiful hand embroidered bag with the words 'Pick your socks up' on the front. An ideal gift for the messy teenagers in your lives! this Sock Bag
along with the waterproof bikini bag mentioned are both made by the fair
trade embroidery village in the Han commune about 45km North of

Hanoi.
Each bag takes approx 2 days of work by these skilled artisans to make, they have all been machine washed before to ensure that all of the colours are locked in. they along with all of our handmade embroidered underwear bags are for sale on our site at the price of £9.99.

In the next month we will be adding a lot more hand embroidered products from the north of Vietnam including a wider range of Laundry bags and lingerie bags, as well as a wider selection of silk jewellery rolls.



Back here in Hoi An, The credit crunch has taken its toll, and compared to last year tourism in Vietnam is down by 40%. This is having a huge effect on local businesses. Many shops have closed in the last month as there isn't enough passing trade to justify there staying open.

I was lucky enough to have one of my closest friends from Australia come and visit me this month and we set about trying to help the local economy by shopping to our hearts content! he he!

I was also able to take her on a tour of the local Cham Island, this is where some of our jewellery rolls are made as well as out Cham Island shell necklace is from.

The island is 15km off of the coast of Hoi An and we were able to go over for a tour for the day! as you can see from the photographs it is a truly idyllic island and the local people are very friendly and kind. The island has approx 2000 people living on in, the majority of them are fishermen. The island is very basic and they only have power for 4 hours a day in the evening, and they get nearly all of there supplies from the mainland.

It was a great day where we were able to meet the locals and get to experience a community
removed from the tourism hub across on the mainland, as well as work on our tans!





The children at the Orphanages seem to be doing well, we have had quite a few adopted in the last month. When i visited last week we were able to meet a new addition. A baby girl who was under two weeks old. she had been left at the orphanage two days previously. We took it upon ourselves to name her rose as she was so beautiful. We are hoping that she will be adopted quickly but the reality is she most likely will be there until she is at least 1 year old.
Many of the older children at some of the centres find there situations difficult and unfortunately last month we had four children aged 9-12 years old run away, we haven't heard any news about them but we are hoping that they will find there way back to the centres soon. We are working with the global volunteer network to try and get some of the older children into vocational training. Some of the teenagers have been doing some art work and making some bags and jewellery that we hope to be soon selling on the website.This is something we hope will give the kids a chance to see that they can create a future for themselves and the items we sell will give the kids some private income. watch this space!

We hope that next month will be busier than this one, we a currently talking with the centres to decide where will be the best place to send The Little Feet Donations!

Until next month!

Sarahx

Week One!

Hi,

Well The Little Feet Company has successfully survived its first week of trading! I thought that the difficult hardest part of creating the website was actually learning how to create the template and decipher the magical and complex world of Html coding. It never even entered my head the sheer amount of work there is to do once you have 'gone live'.

I am now trying to learn about the world of SEO, for any of you out there like me this is all do do with getting your site found on the website. I am now writing endless applications to directories so that people can actually find my site.

Things here in Hoi an are very wet and rainy at the moment! which I'm guessing is why this is called the rainy season. The Vietnamese concept of a flood i have learnt is complex. On my way to pick up some items that were brought this week I found myself knee deep in water, i had to abandon my bike and navigate my way through the potholed street. When i finally arrive in the shop looking like a drowned rat the owner smiles and says 'if this keeps up i think it might flood later' apparently a foot of water isn't a flood!!

I'm sure that if a town was submerged in over a foot of water we would all get the day of work..maybe even two! But not here in Vietnam.

Although its taken a while we are now starting to see the effects of the economic difficulties that have been the UK and the USA etc..

My friends coffee shop is now fully in the afternoons as many of the 100's of the people whoa re employed to make cloths for the tourists are now on half days. Tourism is down over 50% for this time of year and the tourist that are visiting are spending a lot less.

Unfortunately this has lead to a lot of children being taken out of school in the afternoon to start to peddle the local crafts to the tourists in the local coffee shops. As i have now been here for 4 months i no the children who normally do this and everyday there are new faces being added to the group! I can see how easily this will put the tourists of staying longer and buying something, and how these children would benefit a lot more by staying in school. But they also need to eat and if their families can not provide enough money for them then this seems to be the easiest solution. It is very sad to see and something i hope is only temporary.

Due to the launch of the website i have not been in to the orphanages now for nearly two weeks..it feels like two years. I am heading in tomorrow and am so excited to see my little friends..and the new ones that have arrived in my absence!

The first aim of the websites donations to the children is to buy some new beds for the Red Cross babies orphanage. I brought about 13 last year but due to the huge influx of babies recently they are trying to squeeze 3 babies in one cot! As you can imagine this isn't ideal especially when illness spreads through them so quickly!

This week we have also had some sad news. One of the beautiful babies unfortunately died this week! She suffered from what we call 'baby blue' syndrome. This is when the child due to a heart problem doesn't get enough blood circulating and as a result turns a blue colour. The Global volunteer Network who i go to the orphanages with had a last minute fundraising appeal and managed to get enough money to send her to Ho Chi Minh for the operation she needed. But unfortunately she caught an infection and passed away this weekend. I also got news that a local ex pact died yesterday from Dengue fever! as you may know this is contracted from mosquito bites. It makes my need to get all the babies into safe beds with mosquito nets even more urgent.

The Little Feet Company's website is here for a purpose, and its something that can easily be forgotten! everything that you buy from this site is going to a cause that i am extremely passionate about. These children deserve the best chance in life. The have a right to food, water, love, clothes and opportunity and a successful future. It is something that due to a million reasons they find themselves without and its something that i want to try and improve.

I would like to say a big thank you to ....

Rachel Ball
Carole Andrews
Linda Byrnes
Lynda Byrnes
Kathy Szota
Abigail Payne

For supporting me and the children this week by buying something from my site...it means the world to me!

O.k well ill be off now..please check back at the site as this week i will be adding a lot more stuff including about 100 silk ties, bed runners, table runners and table mats, silk cushions, and lots more!!!!

Until next week

Sarah Byrnes

The Little Feet Company