Why polymer wouldn’t work in Nepal

Early days working with local beads

It was 2004 and we were in eastern Nepal again, this time staying with colleagues at a hospital. I was working on some research and we were thinking about whether we could move from Australia to live and work at the hospital. A Nepalese friend of a friend was asking Wendy about the polymer jewellery that she was making. Could Wendy please show her what she was doing? Maybe she could teach it to the other ladies at her organisation? Please? The young lady’s name was Kopila.

I said that it would never work. ‘The worst thing you can be here is a well-meaning westerner with another failed project.’ I thought of the near-impossibility of getting reliable supplies of materials from the US. How could you possibly send products out of eastern Nepal? How could you make the quality and consistency to sell into other countries? Visions of failure and disappointment and another ‘aid’ stuff-up.

Wendy didn’t disagree. But…it couldn’t hurt to show them some jewellery-making, just using the beads that were locally available. From the early days in that first roller-shuttered office on the highway through various rented offices, polymer arrived in our visitors’ suitcases. And the ladies learnt. Jewellery supplies arrived in parcels. Necklaces, earrings, bangles and brooches were couriered out in cardboard boxes, wrapped in pages of the Kantipur Daily newspaper. Systems were set up. Quality-control put in place. Samunnat thrived.

I wasn’t wrong! Lots of aid fails. Short-term KPIs are met, objectives are signed off, people go home, projects wither and die. It’s still mad that an organisation can be funded by the sales of polymer products into western markets. It has worked because of smallness, responsiveness, long-term commitment, determination and some extremely special people. Things will be different in the future. But what an amazing present!