Mai Handicrafts

Mai Vietnamese Handicrafts, which works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is an income generation and education project for poor and neglected children, adolescents and poor women. Mai works to provide employment, appropriate training and to promote self-reliance for disadvantaged families and people of ethnic minority in south Vietnam. Sales profits are used for funding various social work activities. Many of Mai's producers are street children whose cases are followed up by social workers.

Mai Vietnamese Handcrafts
200 Nguyen Trong Tuyen St
Phu Nhuan District
HCM City, Vietnam
848/440.988 phone
848/298.540 fax

Craftlink

Craftlink is a non profit organization in Hanoi that works with ethnic minority craftspeople in cooperation with the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. The remote hilltribes of Vietnam create some of the finest textiles in the world, embellished with weaving or embroidery. Craftlink is committed to cultural preservation through Fair Trade. They also provide assistance with training in business skills, quality control and product development.

Ta Phin Commune

Ta Phin Commune is located in the northern mountains of SaPa near the border of China. Two minority groups share the commune's resources, the Red Dzao and the Hmong. In a project with Craftlink, Mountain Rural development program and Oxfam Quebec, the women of Ta Phin are bringing their remarkable batiks and embroideries to the international market. The women have always grown indigo and dyed their own cloth, and now they can recieve additional training in tailoring, bookkeeping and management of their own handicraft enterprise. Because they now have a steady demand for their work, another generation of Hmong and Dzao women are keeping traditional arts alive. Income from the project has already funded a modern school building, and better water and irrigation to the villages of Ta Phin.