Yummy Linen's COVID-19 Response, working with India

Well, the year 2020 is one most Australians would like to forget about completely. With the devastating bush fires in the Spring and Sumer of 2019 wiping out so much of our native bush, farmland, homes and wildlife, not to mention the loss of life, we did not have a happy Christmas. But it doesn't end there. Most of Australia was in the brink of the worse drought on record and so many animals, both wild, and farming, were dying. Towns were running out of water and Australia was in a shocking situation. The first responders gave everything to help save lives and properties but sadly a few of those heroic humans lost theirs.

Then it rained! Life-giving rain, thankfully long, heavy and quenching. Australia thought we were on the road to recovery.

But ... The world then got hit with this COVID-19 epidemic. And life changed as we have never known it before.

Social isolation is world wide. All aeroplanes grounded, businesses shut, lives lost. Mass unemployment. If you are here with me now, you're living it so I need not go on.

So what to do?

For us, it's an interesting question. You see, we are an Australian business, who has always supported Australian Made. It's not a new thing for us, we didn't need to 'suddenly think of supporting Australian businesses. We always have. but, and the big but here is that Australia does not produce textiles like the bedding we sell. All cloth is made overseas! If you are wearing clothes and sitting in a chair with cloth on it or reclining in your bed, then the fabric has been imported.

Which meant we started copping flack from uninformed people because we ' don't support Australia'. But hang on, yes, we do. All profits from our stock stay in Australia, and the more we sell, the more money goes back into our community.

Peoples priorities and thoughts have finally turned to supporting Australian businesses. That's a massive tick from us. We are so lucky, our government has looked after us. We have great medical services and I would not want to be in any other country right now.

And that last statement got us thinking. "we would not want to be in any other country right now?"

Always the optimist, I personally started to think, which country could we work with that won't be as lucky as us?

And I chose India. Indian cotton is some of the best in the world, but so many people in India will be dire trouble from this pandemic. They do not have a medical system and the hill tribes will have no work because of lockdown.

The countries poorest families are not going to fare well from this. So, over the course of 8 weeks, I have developed a relationship with a local family who own a small shop and 'employ' the local villagers to make their Kantha
 

The men proudly do the block printing and the women do the Kantha stitch. Everyone is paid for their work and that means the village eats!

We are a micro-business, so tiny-winy in fact that you may just be finding out about us now. Buy your support, especially in buying the hand made Kantha products, means we can in turn bring in more stock. The more we sell, the better off our little community outside of Jaipur India will be. We can't help everybody, but this is our way of trying.

Australians are lucky, so help us to help someone on the other side of the world that you don't know and will never meet. Help us to put food on their tables and save the children from the sex trade. Help us to empower the women.

We are after all, one world.