Social businesses bring Thai hill products to IKEA

DOI TUNG, Thailand: Since leaving behind conflict and poverty in their native countries, Kam Kampun and Nittaya Soponprakobkit have not ventured beyond the forested hills in northern Thailand they now call home. Without Thai ID cards, their movement is restricted. Their handmade creations, however, are set to travel the world.

Kampun, 60, makes beautiful paper from mulberry bark and Nittaya, 32, has woven striking black, white and grey textiles which are now on sale in IKEA stores across Europe. The pair work for the Doi Tung Development Project, one of Thailand’s oldest and most established social enterprises, which employs hill tribe communities, many of whom are stateless. From this month, their products can be bought at IKEA stores in six European countries, including Britain and Sweden, as part of a limited-edition collection called EFTERTANKE (“reflection”) launched by the world’s biggest home furnishings retailer. This is the sixth and largest collection Doi Tung has produced for IKEA in a decade-long partnership. Some 200,000 products - made of textiles, pottery and paper - have been crafted by about 330 artisans, three quarters of them women. “I cannot go anywhere (in) or outside the country, but my products can be sold in other countries,” Nittaya, a native of Yunnan in China who started helping her family farm opium aged six, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation proudly.

In Thailand, a middle-income country of 66 million people, about 7 million live in poverty and onethird of 15-year-olds are illiterate, according to the World Bank. There are nearly half a million stateless people, who are not recognized as nationals of any country, government figures show. —Reuters