By Huong Dang | CEO & Founder
It's been a challenging few months for HopeBox but the GlobalGiving community has been an amazing place to access the funding, tools, training, and support we need to become more effective. It's donations such as yours which has truly made all the difference during these trying times. Each woman that comes to HopeBox has their own story of suffering, surviving and transforming.
Pandemics make existing inequalities for women, and those in extreme poverty, significantly worse. Their economic vulnerability is due to immobility, job loss and income disruption. The lack of business exacerbates the precarious situation of those whose livelihoods depend on the limited amount of money they make to survive. Without savings, they will experience great financial difficulty and their limited access to market information during the economic recovery phase will only further add to their vulnerability. This is even more so the case for those women who are in essence imprisoned at home with their violent abuser. The loss of income and any sort of financial independence make it even harder for them to escape.
Chau* has worked for HopeBox for over a year and is now the head of internal operations. She spends her days managing the kitchen, preparing orders and is the creator of the beautiful designs that you know from our signature HopeBox biscuits. Whilst life is now calm for Chau, it wasn’t so a few years ago. She knows only too well what it's like to be a prisoner in your own home. For eight years Chau was violently abused by her husband who demanded that she did not leave their house. Although she escaped many times, it wasn’t until she found HopeBox that she felt confident she could support herself and escape the brutal conditions of her former home.
Art Therapy is the process we use here for self-expression and to help women understand their emotional conflicts, continue to develop their social skills, improve their self-image and ultimately restore normal function to their lives. Here at HopeBox, we do this in a myriad of ways as we'd like to share some highlights over the past few months.
HopeBox was thrilled to be asked to join St. Paul American School in order to help educate children on the importance of art therapy. Our HopeBox cookies are a way for women to express through using art therapy as a way to assist in the treatment of women who are victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. Many of the women who work for HopeBox have children of their own too. Our team thoroughly enjoyed helping children engage in the process of creating art, responding to artwork and presenting their artwork to others. We're so appreciative to the team at St. Paul American School who believe in educating children on the importance of supporting organisations that advocate for gender equality.
We've been educating the women at HopeBox too on sustainability and the importance that one small action can have. With Vietnam's plastic pollution being one of the highest in the world, we sat down as a team to see what we could do to make some changes and alleviate the effect on our environment. Our latest creation, Beeswax Wraps are 100% biodegradable, can be used for up to ten months and made from high-quality natural products such as jojoba oil and pine resin. We use cotton material and only natural resources to create a product that can be used again and again. Our team chose the colours, patterns and what they would like to see and use.
Health and fitness is an essential part of any journey to recovery and twice a month, HopeBox participates in self-defence classes and boxing. We've noticed a significant increase in their confidence, balance and physical conditioning. These social activities are so important and an absolute highlight of the week for the team.
Lastly, our team recently finished Yoga & Health Education from Ms Tam Nhu who flew from Saigon to support HopeBox and deliver five one-day sessions of holistic healing through yoga. Throughout the sessions, our formidable team of women practised connecting with their inner peace, inner child and deep healing with a focus on realising our value and practising mindfulness. These sessions are important to our HopeBox team since they have gone through such traumatic experiences in life.
Our project provides a transition model that provides employability skills (including hospitality skills training, career development skills, leadership training), business engagement opportunities and work-based therapy (psychosocial education, relaxation techniques and outsourced trauma counselling. We empower HopeBox women through creative story-telling & therapeutic baking leading to improved awareness and the ability to enact changes among victims and local authorities.
You're a part of this journey too. It's your support that has made such a difference. We're forever thankful for you for helping us during this global pandemic. We look forward to sharing more updates with you.
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