Done Right

With only a week left of our stay on Otres Beach at Done Right’s cozy guest house, we are already making plans to return. It’s very hard to describe this place to anyone who hasn’t been here but we are going to try over the next few lines.

This is certainly no sad place, but there are definitely several small scale and large scale projects that need to be created or contributed to. Creativity and relaxation come unforced for the ‘barangs’ (us Westerners) living here, along with the spontaneous desire to contribute to the community. The Khmer people have this admirable capacity to give you a smile no matter what the situation and this makes you want to give something back.

From our experience of the last two weeks, it seems the worst form of desperation and poverty is not very evident here. However, this is clearly a developing country and what is needed now is improvements. And because of the positive and practical nature of the locals, these improvements seem to need not much more than some initiative to actually happen.

One of the main things we’ve been working with here is the so-called “can-kids”. Srenu, Da, Kumli and Nang are four of them. These kids run along the beach every day with huge rice sacks which are about the same size as them, collecting cans for which they get about 1 US cent per can. If they don’t collect enough cans in a day, they are likely to face consequences from home – exactly what, they don’t talk much about.

Clare from next door started this admirable endeavor with these kids spontaneously and we have been joining her. While us living here on Otres might not be able to bring about enormous change for all the children in Cambodia in a similar situation, we do what we can with the ones who are here. We teach a little english or any other useful skills we can and  we try to create a space in which they can be the children they actually are for a few hours a day. Dreamworks animations are a particularly effective way for us to bribe them to learn their ABCs.

So in our small way, we try to do something right; helping around the guesthouse and anywhere we can in the community. it is a comfortable chaos, down to earth and real.

Below is our workforce (OR not, thats kind of the point, Done Right, Red. anm)

- Felicia & Filippa

We are proud to announce that the first three lines of products from our beloved Done Right have come to existents! We have been working with local tailors, that own their own little shops, and with them designed the products using local materials, so to leave a as small carbon footprint as we currently can.

The first product is simply a Wick Cover, a product designed for Salza Fire Gear. Not only do we now have a product quite superior then before, we can produce it at a reasonable cost, and we know the materials are made in the area, and we know that the workers are getting treated well, as we live among them, first hand, because honestly, do you know how made the computer your reading on, the t-shirt your wearing or the chair your in?

The second two products are Skins, or computer bags if you wish, in two different designs, both being quite different from the ones generally sold in stores. The colors and materials have been chosen as prototypes, to see how different textiles can stand wear and tare, and to see how people react to them.

The first one of the two is made in a white outer textile with black flowers, with a blue lining, and closes with a flap, connected to the base by two buttons. on the flap there is a large pocket with a zipper, this is made to hold USB memories, modems, bank devices and so on (I know that I’m sick and tired of those things scratching my macbook).

The second one is made from a black outer textile with red stripes, and is more “hand bag” like, as it moves along from the actual case into a handle, so that its a bit easier to carry, and this model also has the same kind of pocket as on the first white model.

So, what now? Well, Im going to select the best models and textiles, together with my designer friend Ida (she’s also the one planning the shelter project as seen below, if you follow our blog) and soon we will have a line of products, that will be brought back to Sweden, and hopefully sold in a store close to you!

These are big times for us, as all the things we set out to do so many months ago are falling in to place, one by one, we are slowly proving that a life outside the western world can be productive, and not only so, but more productive, with a heightened sense of enjoyment of life. Work Done Right.

-Sam