Thursday, July 15, 2010

Day 1: Spiders, Frogs, and Fish

We have arrived and we hit the ground running! Cambodia is a wonderful country and we have seen a lot of it over the past several days. Our first day was packed with plenty of stories to tell. We will keep this as short as possible. After breakfast on Wednesday we jumped in our van for a brief introduction to what CGI is doing in Phnom Penh.

Stop 1: We met Mr. Hay. He is the Australian trained, Cambodian tailor who is our contact for training girls to sew and producing the gowns for the Daughter line. Mr. Hay is a wonderful man who is also a follower of Jesus and he is very excited to be working with us. We saw his shop, his work (impressive!) and met some of the women who currently work for him. He is excited to join us in this opportunity as well as to provide training for the girls.

Stop 2: Off to see the facility that has recently been leased for to house the Daughters prom and bridal initiative. All we could say was, "Wow!" The facility is beautiful, close to the other CGI works in the city and very big. It has three floors with room for training, living, and storage. We believe that we could house up to ten girls at a time and provide work space for them to be trained as well as produce the prom and bridal lines.

Stop 3: by Tavi. This is a sewing enterprise that employs local women to produce handbags and scarves to be sold in the US. We will share more on this project in the coming days and Daughters will be connected to these women in some way in the future.

We loaded up into a van and set out for our 6 hour drive to Siem Riep.

Traveling abroad can be exhausting. Who knew that sitting on a plane and watching movies for 19 hours could take such a tole on your mind and body.

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