Projects

Poncho Project

With our local expertise, we have organized a small group of very skilled women to hand knit beautiful ponchos for Treehouse in fine fabrics like silk, cotton, linen fine wools, bamboo and cashmere. Each poncho takes more than 15 hours to make and is done with love and care.

This supplemental income to these families is extremely necessary and helpful. Some notable research on the village we are working with is as follows:

The village (Yuvacali Koyu) is situated about 10km from the Euphrates, 60km from Urfa, and two hours by road from Diyarbakir. It has no irrigation system and is not part of the wider Gap project. Water shortages and power cuts are common. Income is nearly 100% from agriculture and is sometimes supplemented by the men of the household working away as seasonal labourers. Average income is around $1,000 per year.

The overall literacy rate is 50 per cent, with roughly a similar percentage of the population speaking Turkish. More boys than girls go to school, and generally, the woman of the house is illiterate. Even in a household where the children are in school and the father has also attended school, the women are uneducated.

In a small study it was found that infant mortality is 20 percent. Marriages to first-degree blood relatives run at around 80 percent. Nearly 100 per cent of births are realized without medical attention.

The position of women there is typical of the Southeast of Turkey. They work as unwaged agricultural labourers within the family’s small holding and have no independent income. There are a total of three women in the village who work outside the family: one is a teacher, the other an assistant at the local school, and the third, a nurse at the local hospital. As working women, they make up less than 1% of the population.

At Treehouse we have endeavoured to help support this village and their families by paying them a fair wage for the beautiful work that they do and increasing that work during the winter months when the income from agriculture and the work opportunities are non-existent. When one of their poncho’s are sold in the store, 10% of the purchase price goes back to their village in a fund earmarked to buy books for their newly built preschool. Please check back often to see our progress and we all thank you for helping.