Pebble - hathay bunano (hand made)

Here are some amazing goodies (knitted veg and more) from the company of the inspiring Samantha Morshed.

Here it is in Samantha's own words:

Hathay Bunano is a non-profit organisation, that I started in 2004 shortly after my family moved en masse to Bangladesh.   Bangladesh is an amazing country of vibrancy and energy; it's colourful and exciting, it's busy and chaotic.   It's a place you really can't imagine until you've visited.  It's also a place of incredible poverty and of people who are so strong and resilient regardless of what life throws at them.

In 2004 Bangladesh wasn't new to me.   I made my first trip here in 1992 when Morshed, to whom I later married, and who is British Bangladeshi, wanted to show me where he had grown up and to introduce me to his mother and a land he loved.

It wasn't many days after arriving therefore in 2004, with two small boys in tow, that I realised that morally it was necessary for me to put whatever limited skills I had to some use to try to help in a small way.   I have always loved crafts and the women of Bangladesh make beautiful things as part of their culture and heritage and so it wasn't such a great leap to teach some knitting and crochet skills and start to make toys that would likely have an eager customer base and could potentially bring sustainable and flexible employment to rural and disadvantaged women.

Soon my husband was working with me full-time setting up new rural production centres and arranging training courses as we were expanding.    Now sometimes, I miss those early days sitting cross-legged on the floor in a remote village teaching groups of women to knit and learning Bangla from them at the same time, but I'm excited about where Pebble now is and the hope it brings to all the women we work with.

I was very fortunate to be honoured with an MBE in 2009 for my work in Hathay Bunano.

Samantha