I'm often asked 'do you have any male knitters?' and until recently the answer was always 'sadly - no'.    Hathay Bunano does not discriminate in any way - we encourage people of all backgrounds and cultures and faiths to participate and we work with anyone who comes to us for work without discrimination and indeed without even knowing about anyone's background.   But until recently we had never had any interest from men in our knitting work. And then in the same week that I viewed the hugely popular Real Men Knit video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jYa_rJyG18&context=C4d1cc6bADvjVQa1PpcFN_xiboGvZ7_JSqJqifSFLZDzMNy_L5TWs%3D), I also found out that…

Just last week Hathay Bunano, the makers of the Pebble brand, signed an agreement to train a further 200 women in Dinajpur.   Dinajpur is in the far north of Bangladesh and takes about 10 hours to reach by road.    We've been working successfully with the AB Foundation for 4 years and already employ 200 women artisans in that area.    The agreement we've just signed is with the Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction programme (UPPR).  You can see Achia and Mahmuda from the Dinajpur clusters signing the agreement in the photo here. UPPR is the largest urban poverty…

Hathay Bunano is proud to be a member of the UN Global Compact.  The United Nations Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.  That sounds like a lot of talk but more broadly the idea is to encourage more businesses to follow the ten principles and to catalyse actions in support of broader UN goals such as the Millenium Development Goals. Hathay Bunano works hard in particular towards MDG1 - to end poverty and…

We're so happy to see our Organic motif bunny on the front page of the John Lewis Spring Catalogue.    Since we have an international audience on this blog I want to explain a little about John Lewis.   John Lewis Partnership is a chain of department stores in the UK, but it is more than that.    Founded back in 1864 and set up as a partnership where all employees share the profits, it's one of the earliest examples of a social business. We grew up with John Lewis.   As a child, my mum and I would take…

The head office staff of Hathay Bunano went for their annual staff picnic last Thursday in Sonargoan.   Sonargoan is the old capital of Bengal and has some beautiful historic buildings and is a lovely village to walk around and spend a little time out of Dhaka.    Staff bring their children with them too and stay the whole day and into late evening enjoying the lovely winter weather, good company and music.    Its just a fun day out.    Whilst Hathay Bunano is largely staffed by women, a few men do work with us too!   A big…

Yeasmin is one big story of hope.   She has broken down cultural barriers and achieved happiness that she never imagined was possible.   Her story is one that will touch your heart and will hopefully inspire many others struggling against prejudice. Yeasmin is a little more than 3ft tall and 22 years old.   She first came to Hathay Bunano when she was 17.    She had been living at the Centre for the Rehabilitation for the Paralysed, a truly inspirational NGO doing incredible work for those who are both disabled and poor.    In Bangladesh if you are…

The latest Pebble catalogue is now available in audio slideshow format.   All the fun of Pebble toys with music attached.   There's some lovely new products in this catalogue including a range of 3 smiley caterpillar rattles.   These are easy for little hands to hold and shake and sure to be a hit.    There's also a whole new range of hats with earflaps which we think you'll like a lot.    Pebble hats is a new venture for us and will be growing over coming seasons.   You've all really liked our rainbow hats in bright colours,…

There's a wonderful charity in Bangladesh called Blankadesh and every winter they make and distribute fleece blankets to poor children in Dhaka and throughout Bangladesh.   The business model is clever and simple.    They sell exactly the same fleece blankets to expatriates in Dhaka for twice the cost price and for every blanket an expat buys, a second blanket is given to a poor child.    It's a wonderful model.   You buy a blanket for yourself and get your blanket and at the same time keep a child somewhere in Bangladesh warm.    This winter they have been…

For those of you who love pebble toys and always wanted the opportunity to knit them for yourselves we are now starting to issue some of our patterns through the blog.    It seems to make sense that the first pattern we should issue should be one of the first toys we made at Hathay Bunano - the carrot rattle.   You can download the pdf from this blog and start knitting.    If you go into this blog post by clicking the 'read more...' link and then further down that page you will see the 'download attachment' link.  …

We've been making knitted vegetables since Hathay Bunano began in 2004.   The knitted carrot rattle was one of the very first toys that we made.    At the time, a wonderful woman, Jo Hanley, was posted in Dhaka as an expatriate with her husband and she made most of the patterns for the early vegetables.    My children had a set of plastic vegetables in a basket when they were little and they loved them.   They carried them around the house and would periodically stop and take them all out of the basket before putting them all back…