Call for Help: Lend a Hand to Struggling Mothers
By Choi Jin-young
Picture this: a mother of 14 spends an entire day weaving and selling rugs in order to make a living and provide for her family. Each rug is sold for less than $1, and the woman is only able to weave five a day. Do you think you would you be able to do it?
This is the grim reality Choi Jin-young, a Korean student studying public policy at the National University of Singapore, was confronted with while volunteering in a small village in Paranaque near Manila, the Philippines.
As far as Choi was concerned, making rugs using a manually laborious and financially inefficient process for a living was not the ideal situation for those wishing a better future for their children. To worsen the bleak outlook, she later learned that a local clothing manufacturer ― who had provided ``waste'' material for free ― had started charging for the scrap fabrics used to make the rugs, further eroding the meagre incomes the mothers were earning.
Unable to sit back and watch while others' lives fell into despair, Choi began brainstorming ideas on how to help the hard-working mothers out of this enforced poverty trap.
She began by focusing on some of the key conditions that would create an alternative livelihood ― the first being the production of high value items, which would provide the mothers with a good profit margin for their strenuous efforts, rather than a subsistence wage. Secondly, she reasoned that the product could not be too complex or difficult to make as they had little professional training. Thirdly ― and perhaps the most critical factor ― the raw materials had to be easily accessible and, more importantly, very cheap.
After running through a range of options, Choi decided that the production of a range of greeting cards made from recycled materials would be the best project for the mothers living in a village mired in poverty.
She began to network with contacts, appealing to her Singaporean friends, and asking for the support and funding for the necessary know-how transfers and initial marketing costs. Choi was convinced that an environmental greeting card enterprise would be self-sustainable in the future, once production got underway and regular sales commenced. She encouraged her friends to extend their own Christmas spirit beyond their own families and loved ones, to support people from the neighbouring country in order to help them create a better future, not only for themselves but also for their children.
With their help, Choi has begun the set the wheels in motion. In the next step of the process, she is hoping to expand the venture even further and bring in support from Korea.
Choi is seeking to enlist the help of creative Korean designers who would be willing to visit the Philippines and teach labouring mothers how to create beautiful cards for all occasions using sustainable, recycled materials. Her goal is to pick art teachers through a national design competition, then help pass along their skills to the struggling mothers. The resulting greeting cards, made by the Filipina mothers, would then be sold to international philanthropic organizations. Customers buying the cards would be informed that their contribution is going toward helping the impoverished in small communities in the Philippines.
In her other philanthropic work, Choi has previously volunteered at the Shinmyung Orphanage in Pupyon, Incheon. There, she mobilized and fundraised more than $3,000 with the help of a supportive expatriate community in order to send nine young orphans to Thailand on a trip that would change their lives.
The children, who visited the hill tribes of Thailand, had an opportunity to participate in a variety of cultural and traditional practices, including dancing and drumming. Choi said in a previous interview with The Korea Times that she hoped the children would learn from the tribesmen that wealth doesn't determine happiness.
``The tribe's people are poor,'' she said, ``but they are some of the happiest people in the world. If the children can learn that wealth doesn't determine happiness, it would be wonderful.''
To support Choi's current endeavour to help Filipina mothers, please e-mail
for more information.