Ramon Magsaysay Awards: Laotian creates livelihood by reviving silk weaving

MANILA, Philippines - When she fled her village in eastern Laos in 1961 to escape bombings during the Vietnam War, all that Kommaly Chanthavong took with her were heirloom pieces of woven silk handed down from her grandmothers.

Amid the turbulent times that came after losing her father in the Indochina War, her love for silk weaving – taught to her by her mother when she was barely five years old – was the one thing that remained constant for Kommaly.

At age 13 she was a refugee, walking barefoot over 600 kilometers from her home to the capital Vientiane.

But with great determination in weaving silk and selling fabric, she managed to pursue her studies and earn a nursing diploma in 1966.

Six years later, she married and raised a family. After the communist takeover of Vientiane, however, life became so difficult she had to walk long miles from village to village to buy and sell goods between Laos and Thailand.

Seeing war-displaced, rural women in Vientiane who were in desperate need of work, Kommaly used her meager savings to buy looms and in 1976 started a weaving group of 10 women whom she called the Phontong Weavers, based at her home.

This group later became the Phontong Handicraft Cooperative – a network of over 450 Lao artisans spanning 35 villages.

Impressed by her success, the Lao government leased to Kommaly in the 1980s 42 hectares of land in northeast Laos for use as silk farm.

The then barren land has since become the Mulberries Organic Silk Farm, dedicated to the revival of Lao silk production.

The farm has trained over a thousand farmers and weavers and has created over three thousand jobs.

Kommaly did not stop there.

In 1990, she also started Camacrafts, a non-profit project that markets traditional Lao and Hmong handicrafts. She worked with hundreds of women in 20 villages.

Then in 1993, she created Mulberries, a social enterprise that initiates income-generating projects around traditional arts and crafts, which benefited more than 2,000 villagers.

“Our goal is to strengthen the position of women by giving them a dependable income and therefore, improving the chances of their children,” said Kommaly, a recipient of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award.

But Kommaly was not only able to help the villagers in the aftermath of war. In the process, she also lifted their spirits and that of their nation.