Yangon Post
Back to the Beginning
It all started with some stools. These exact stools, in fact. They were collecting dust in a market stall in a town in the far north of Burma in early 2016. The stall-holder told us he'd pivoted to selling mangos as nobody bought his stools anymore so he's stopped making them. We bought them all.
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Meet the Marble Carvers
This man lives in a town called Marble Or "Sagyin" in Burmese. The town is in the shadows of a huge marble mountain. Everybody in the region works in the marble trade, and 99% of them made marble buddha statues. Huge ones, medium ones, tiny ones.
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The Last Brownie
Who gets the last brownie? Or more likely in Burma, the last piece of jaggery? You remember the scene in Notting Hill, where the characters compete over who has the saddest life. It is Richard Curtis at his best, curtailing our chortles with a choke as he layers the hilarious with heartbreak. At Kalinko, we think about the concept quite often, and of how subjective personal struggles are. One person's unfortunate dropped egg is another's trigger for despair. And in the context of Kalinko, in the UK we may be grappling with a customer order lost by the couriers, while a maker over in Burma is struggling having lost their entire home and livelihood to the conflict.
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The Story behind the Stars
Meet Pann Nann Ein Our embroidered star decorations are made by Pann Nann Ein, a social enterprise based in Yangon, Burma which enables people with disabilities to use their creative potential for safe dignified work. Over 2 million people in Burma live with disabilities. That's 3% of the population, a figure which increases daily due to the ongoing civil conflict. Most cannot find work and receive no support at all from the government. Pann Nann Ein work with about 20 adults with differing disabilities, mainly from poorer areas of Yangon. They receive income for producing their beautiful handmade products and are also supported with physical and mental health, as well as social and emotional wellbeing. The lady in the blue top here is called April. She is one of Pann Nann Ein's main card makers, but also leads the star-making team. She takes great pride in her handmade work and is learning to make new products all the time. As a person living with a disability, having work gives her dignity in her community. She is able to support her parents with the income she receives from work which is particularly important as her mother is unable to work due to health reasons. Everybody in Burma is living through very uncertain, turbulent times, but despite the challenges Pann Nann Ein have been able to continue working. They are hoping to expand their work to include people with disabilities from other regions, particularly those most affected by conflict.
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The Yangon Post: Issue 5
Did you know that the Burmese are more into tea than we are? Or that our furniture is made from old Burmese buildings? Or that there are 3000 miles of un-mapped railways in Burma leading to mystery destinations? Read all about it in the latest issue of The Yangon Post, our in-house newspaper which comes home with every order.
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Why is our Monsoon Planter called the Monsoon Planter?
Why Monsoon? Well, they're made from Rain Wood, and we wanted to pay tribute to the power of Burma's magnificent monsoon season. Each day from June to October, the heat bursts, the sky cracks in two and great sloshes of rain fall so suddenly and so hard that the sound mutes everything else and you're instantly drenched, right through to the skin.
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Meet the Makers: Carpenters
In June, we visited one of our carpentry workshops near Bago in Burma, and made this video while we were there of one of our salad bowls coming to life. This is Nga Nyi at work, literally meaning "little brother".
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Our Sustainability & Human-Rights Manifesto
How do we support our makers within the most challenging of contexts? We have recently launched our HRDD & Environmental Sustainability Manifesto to walk you through it.
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Meet the Makers: Downtown Teak Collection
This is Aung Myat Lin and Jack from IDEA Woodsmith. They've been reclaiming teak from downtown Yangon buildings since 1999. Well, that's not quite true. They're too young for that, but Jack's dad started the show, and these two have since taken on the mantle.
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