Pride of Thatta Kedona
Sunday, March 27, 2011
By Jyoti Kalsi, Gulf News Report
Authentic Shahi Haleem from the famous Kausar restaurant in Karachi, a variety of delicious sweets, hand-embroidered salwar suits and shawls, trendy leather jackets and handbags, traditional handmade shoes, glittering jewellery, intricately carved wooden furniture, beautiful carpets and entertainment by well known performers — you can get all this and more at the Pakistan pavilion in Global Village.
The façade of this pavilion is modelled on the Baba E Khyber Fort in Peshawar, while the interior is a recreation of a typical Peshawari bazaar with over 80 stalls offering a taste of Pakistani culture, cuisine and creativity. While all the people managing the stalls and the items on sale are Pakistani, visitors will be surprised to find a German manning a stall here. Roman Laube is a media designer from Berlin and is spending his annual vacation as a volunteer for an NGO called Thatta Kedona. He has flown down to Dubai especially to help manage the organisation's stall at the pavilion.
"Kedona means ‘toy' in Punjabi and this began as a self-help project for women in a small village called Thatta Ghulam in Pakistan's Punjab province. It was established in 1993 by a German social worker. The project began with five women and now we have over 120 women working with us.
The money raised from worldwide sales of our products has been used to build a healthcare centre, a school, a deep borewell and training centres for young boys and girls in the village. We are grateful to the organisers of the Pakistan pavilion for giving us this space and we hope that visitors to the Global Village will support us whole-heartedly," said Laube.
The colourful stall has an array of products hand-made by the women. These include dolls in the traditional attire of different areas of Pakistan, embroidered dresses, cards, bookmarks,
beaded key rings, finger puppets, jewellery including necklaces with miniature doll pendants, block-printed bedcovers and Christmas decorations.
Also on display are beautiful hand-painted tinsheet miniature cycles, rickshaws and trucks made by young men from the village. The goods range in price from Dh3 to Dh200.
Authentic Shahi Haleem from the famous Kausar restaurant in Karachi, a variety of delicious sweets, hand-embroidered salwar suits and shawls, trendy leather jackets and handbags, traditional handmade shoes, glittering jewellery, intricately carved wooden furniture, beautiful carpets and entertainment by well known performers — you can get all this and more at the Pakistan pavilion in Global Village.
The façade of this pavilion is modelled on the Baba E Khyber Fort in Peshawar, while the interior is a recreation of a typical Peshawari bazaar with over 80 stalls offering a taste of Pakistani culture, cuisine and creativity. While all the people managing the stalls and the items on sale are Pakistani, visitors will be surprised to find a German manning a stall here. Roman Laube is a media designer from Berlin and is spending his annual vacation as a volunteer for an NGO called Thatta Kedona. He has flown down to Dubai especially to help manage the organisation's stall at the pavilion.
"Kedona means ‘toy' in Punjabi and this began as a self-help project for women in a small village called Thatta Ghulam in Pakistan's Punjab province. It was established in 1993 by a German social worker. The project began with five women and now we have over 120 women working with us.
The money raised from worldwide sales of our products has been used to build a healthcare centre, a school, a deep borewell and training centres for young boys and girls in the village. We are grateful to the organisers of the Pakistan pavilion for giving us this space and we hope that visitors to the Global Village will support us whole-heartedly," said Laube.
The colourful stall has an array of products hand-made by the women. These include dolls in the traditional attire of different areas of Pakistan, embroidered dresses, cards, bookmarks,
beaded key rings, finger puppets, jewellery including necklaces with miniature doll pendants, block-printed bedcovers and Christmas decorations.
Also on display are beautiful hand-painted tinsheet miniature cycles, rickshaws and trucks made by young men from the village. The goods range in price from Dh3 to Dh200.
Labels: Thatta Kedona
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 2:12 PM,
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