Add Justin Beiber house, direct flights from NYC, the political conf, etc.
Here's the backstory on how I ended up there: Last November, I married my fiancee of many years, Dana Haim, in Cartagena, Colombia. Her family is from Cartagene (her late-grandfather was the first bread-maker there in the 1930s). She herself lived there on an artist residency during college and fell in love with the place.
Here's the backstory on how I ended up there: Last November, I married my fiancee of many years, Dana Haim, in Cartagena, Colombia. Her family is from Cartagene (her late-grandfather was the first bread-maker there in the 1930s). She herself lived there on an artist residency during college and fell in love with the place.
Last Spring, She took me there for the first time last year to look at possible wedding venues, and I was instantly spellbound. Between delicious fried snapper and coconut rice and boat trips to the islands, I learned about the rising gap between rich and poor in Colombia, the high poverty levels in certain areas of Cartagena, and the general lack of opportunities for people in a city where most of the best tourism jobs go to people from other places.
A Colombian friend who runs another amazing organization, Techo, told us about JuanFe, and we made sure to visit. We met Eunice and some of the incredible people who run the place and of course the girls. We visited a couple of the slums where some of the girls live in shacks whose foundations were built on garbage heaps. Given our connection to Cartagena, we knew we wanted to help so desperately, but didn't really know how.
Dana is an amazing artist and talented designer who makes these elaborate mobiles made with pom poms (not the cheerleader kind, just colorful wound balls of yarn) that she connects to deer antlers or driftwood. You can see some on her website. She has been selling them in trendy stores all over the world like ABC home or (insert store here)
A few months ago, she came back from work with a big order for mobiles that she could not fill. To hire someone in NYC to do it would make the costs of production too high. We thought back to the sewing class taught in the Juanfe school and had that eureka moment. What if we could teach the girls and PAY them to make the pom poms ?
We went back again a few weeks ago, a couple weeks after you apparently left, to conduct an experiment that I'm happy to report was a great success. We taught a group of five incredible girls how to make these pom-poms, paying them 600 pesos for each one. Well, my wife taught them, and I mainly filmed and helped with the logistics of getting 40 pounds of acryllic yarn from Bogota to Cartagena. The girls picked it up in less than 30 minutes, and made more than 100 beautiful pom poms in three days. Now they are working on their own, making pompoms in between classes and breastfeeding.
While the project is in its infancy stages, we hope that we can sell lots of products so that we can continue emplWe got to spend lots of quality time with them, and Dumelis told us that you interviewed her. She also shared her heartbreaking story with us. We hope that this will get her
