Margaret Ellwanger’s barn is filled with brilliantly colored
hand-made silk quilts, silk hand bags in every size and fashion,
and intricately beaded and ribboned silk pillows. She has boxes and
boxes full of silk Christmas tree ornaments in the shapes of stars
and hearts, hand-crafted silver snowflakes, and silver rings
embedded with stones once mined in Cambodia to be traded for
weapons.
San Juan Bautista – Margaret Ellwanger’s barn is filled with brilliantly colored hand-made silk quilts, silk hand bags in every size and fashion, and intricately beaded and ribboned silk pillows. She has boxes and boxes full of silk Christmas tree ornaments in the shapes of stars and hearts, hand-crafted silver snowflakes, and silver rings embedded with stones once mined in Cambodia to be traded for weapons.
Behind every pillow, every purse, every perfectly geometric green and brown or pink and blue patchwork design in Ellwanger’s San Juan Bautista barn, there’s a story that can break your heart and warm it at the same time. Each piece is hand-woven by women and children in Cambodia under the guidance of Ellwanger’s organization Pillows for Peace. Some of the women and children are prostitutes sold into brothels when their families couldn’t repay their loans, some are young girls trying desperately to avoid the same fate.
But no matter what their situation, Ellwanger’s goal is to pull the women and their families out of the cycle of permanent poverty and indentured slavery by teaching them a skill and giving the profits of their work back to them.
“When I sell the products, they eat; when they eat they’re not in the hands of money lenders; and when they’re not in the hands of money lenders there’s no threat of anyone coming in and selling their little girls into prostitution,” Ellwanger said.
While living in Singapore about five years ago, German-born physicist Ellwanger and her four children became aware of the plight of women and girls in neighboring Cambodia being sold into prostitution. So they set up a cottage industry and a network of volunteers in the country still scarred by battles with the Khmer Rouge, touring villages and teaching women how to become self-reliant.
“When we first go out into these villages, it’s unbelievable how these people live. They basically live on the street,” Ellwanger said. “But we never give them money, we give them training. We teach them about savings and economics, we group them together in groups of ten so they have support.”
There’s an old saying that you can give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but you can teach a man to fish and he will eat for life. This is something like Ellwanger’s philosophy: Teach the women a craft, teach them about saving money, and they can stay out of the clutches of extreme poverty for life.
“We don’t give hand-outs, we give hand-ups,” she likes to say.
Ellwanger and her team of volunteers teach the women to dye and weave bolts of gorgeous silk, and how to sew together the different colors and shapes into complex patterns and the latest fashions from Paris and America. They make deals with brothel owners to allow the women to weave during their off-time, and within two years they are usually able to buy themselves out of the profession.
The American volunteers, whom Ellwanger refers to lovingly as “old battle axes like me who have the time to volunteer,” also teach the men silversmithing, and they create rings and bracelets and earrings and Christmas tree ornaments.
Pillows for Peace sells the goods in Singapore and out of Ellwanger’s barn, giving the profits back to the women in Cambodia who sit at their looms day after day.
And, once a year, Ellwanger heads to Cambodia with a group of volunteers to build houses for the families in the program.
“My work is truly helping people permanently out of poverty, and it takes a five-year cycle to do that,” she explained. “By the time we build a house, somebody’s typically in the program, and that’s kind of the crowning glory. So then they’re basically done and we go to the next person on the street and work them through the next savings cycle.”
Typically, when a family is about three years into the program, Ellwanger and her volunteers build them a house, raised above the ground to protect them from flooding. The houses cost about $800 each and are paid for through fundraising and Ellwanger’s children’s birthday and Christmas checks, which they save every year for the effort. Under the new houses the women set up their giant looms, where they sit all day and weave and sew. When the daughters come home from school, they help.
“It’s much better for them than the alternative work (prostitution),” Ellwanger said with a sigh.
The volunteers build five or six of the “$800 wonders,” as Ellwanger calls them, during their one-week stay in Cambodia. By the end of the week, the men and women have a place to live, a place to work, and skills that can help feed their families for life and save them from having to sell their daughters to make ends meet.
“That’s why I support the problem that I do in Cambodia, because it’s a permanent thing. Within five years, we take people from off the street and take them into lower middle class,” Ellwanger said.
Ellwanger has eight volunteers so far for this year’s trip to Cambodia, but is always looking for more and hopes to have 15 by the time the group heads off in June. And anyone in San Benito County who wants to help out with the effort would be more than welcome, Ellwanger said. She’s not only looking for volunteers, but also for businesses willing to carry the merchandise in-store.
Anyone interested in either opportunity can contact Margaret Ellwanger at [email protected]. You can also contact Ellwanger at 831-297-4300 for more information or for details on where to buy Pillows for Peace merchandise.
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
