The villages that HHC supports rely on corn, millet, and potatoes for their livelihood, but are faced with famines every few years because of the harsh mountain climate and poor soil conditions. Even during the good years, most families have to find roots and bark of trees from the nearby forests to eat and have members take on work as porters for many months away from home.

HHC continues to give out seed money to women in the villages to help support small income generating activities to supplement farming incomes. Many women are now able to support their own families, even while their husbands are away for several years at a time, often working overseas. Many of these women are managing their own lives and families on their own. In the past fifteen years HHC has supported local entrepreneurial activity including raising chickens, angora rabbits, pigs, medicinal plants as well as metal crafting, weaving, and knitting. Many of these projects have been successful.

Since 2002, HHC has collaborated with the S.P.I.R.A.L. Foundation to help more village women with work. We strongly believe in preserving traditional skills, supporting individual entrepreneurial initiatives and community responsibility, and creating products that are environmentally sensitive. In the past six years, more of our village women have been able to  generate income for their families through handicrafts. We continue to help the village women develop and hone their traditional skills to create exclusive handicrafts that have international appeal. The S.P.I.R.A.L. Foundation not only facilitates the handicraft project by providing funds in advance for the production but also helps sell the crafts. The women working in the handicraft project receive better wages than comparable projects in Nepal. One third of all funds raised from the sale of the handicrafts are returned to the villages to support health and education programs.

We invite all friends and supporters of HHC to look for these beautiful gift items on www.spiralfoundation.org and to support this important project. We also invite friends to host sales in their homes and in the process raise funds for all the village programs.

Click here if you would like to host a sale at home or a fare. Everything will be shipped to you (with no hassles) along with the list and prices of the crafts, labels, payment sheets and receipts, etc. and you can also send back the unsold crafts.