Cambodian efforts to promote silk weavers

(Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

October 08, 2010
Fibre2Fashion

Cambodian handmade silk remained the centre of attraction at a conference organized by the National Silk Centre on the outskirts of Siem Reap at Pouk District, with funding from the European Union.

The main aim behind organizing the Silk Day was to foster the quality of handmade silk items, while giving an idea about the industry and the issues confronting it. The occasion also commemorated conclusion of a project for establishment and promotion of silk sector in Siem Reap and Bantey Meanchey districts.

The project that came along with the EU funding was executed by the Khmer Silk Villages and Chantiers-Ecoles de Formation Professionelle.

Experts at the conference informed that, Khmer silk all in all produces 19 different items for exports.

Also that, the US $25 million worth Cambodian silk industry, provided employment to around 20,500 weavers, this year.

Experts even said that, visitors get drawn towards the Cambodian silk items as it is handwoven.

The silk industry in the country is a vital source of employment for women in Cambodia, and even helps to scale down poverty in rural provinces. Customarily, the silk production task is being carried out by women weavers, who constitute 99.54 percent of the workforce.

The country uses around 400 tons of imported industrial white silk yarn, each year to churn out three tons of superior quality handmade golden silk.

Women change lives worldwide

The Rev. Ann Walling, left, and Chantha Nguon wear Mekong Blue scarves at a fashion show in Nashville. (FILE / THE TENNESSEAN)

May 8, 2010
By Marjorie Mason
Tennessee Voices
The Tennessian

Before I had kids, I dismissed Mother's Day as a Hallmark holiday — a harmless but relatively insignificant occasion to let greeting card companies and florists help you honor your mom.

Then I had kids, and my attitude changed. I work hard for my kids, picking up toys, washing dirty laundry and enduring extended arguments about the merits of regular tooth brushing. Now I think, "Heck yeah, I deserve a day!"

I know I am blessed. But within the last year I have begun to appreciate just how fortunate I am. I have my mother-in-law, Ann Walling, to thank for that. Ann introduced me to Chantha Nguon and the women of the Stung Treng Women's Development Center in rural Cambodia.

Chantha is a founder and head of the center, which works to empower women to escape lives as virtual slaves in the sex trade — their only option for income — through job training and meaningful employment. In Cambodia they have a saying, "Man is gold. Woman is a skirt." Our friend Chantha set out to alter that to: "Man is gold. Woman is a diamond." Beyond the work to support women, Stung Treng also provides child care and education for their children, building a brighter future for their daughters and sons.

Over the past year, our family, led by my mother-in-law, has worked with Chantha and the women of the center to market their line of silk scarves in the U.S. under the brand Mekong Blue Scarves. Through word of mouth and an online store at www.bluesilk.org, in less than six months Mekong Blue has made a world of difference for the women of Stung Treng Women's Development Center. Sales for the center are up 76 percent. Seventeen more women have jobs because of demand. Salaries for the weavers increased 20 percent. The center's school will be able to enroll 50 more children because of the year's success.

All of these numbers bring me deep gratitude, but the most uplifting show of success came in an email from Chantha after a near sell-out the week of Christmas. She wrote that the weavers were overjoyed by the success. "Now they feel like diamonds."

As I reflect on the prosperity we could so easily take for granted, I am humbled by the thought of our friends in Cambodia who are literally weaving new futures for themselves and their families. Mother's Day reminds me that women and mothers do need to be celebrated, lest we undervalue them. This year I'll give cards and flowers to the special women in my life, but I'll also celebrate the millions of women for whom such an expression of appreciation would be a great luxury. I'll celebrate Chantha Nguon, the SWDC and everyone else working to change the lives of women and mothers around the globe.

Marjorie Mason and her husband, Tom, are the owners of Bluesilk.org.

A fine weave

A worker is degumming the silk to unwind the thread from the cocoons which have been dipped in hot water to extract the raw thread.

A worker spinning thread before it is used for weaving.

Tuesday October 7, 2008
Story and photos by LIM CHIA YING
The Star (Malaysia)

Hand-woven Cambodian silk not only makes a great gift, its purchase helps to support Cambodians and preserve their heritage.

THE work that goes into creating the fine quality of Cambodian silk is most painstaking, to say the least. Until one actually witnesses the entire process - from breeding the silkworms to spinning the single last thread - it’s difficult to appreciate the skill involved in producing these beautiful textiles.

A recent holiday to Siem Reap, Cambodia, allowed me to do just that. Half-baked from the searing heat of the sun after a visit to the famed Angkor archaeological sites and temples, my companion and I decided to take it easy the next day and made an out-of-the-way trip to the Angkor Silk Farm.

Travel brochures don’t often mention the farm, and I stumbled upon it while running through pages of small advertisements inside a local guidebook.

Located about 16km outside Siem Reap town, our tuk-tuk driver initially looked lost when we asked for the farm, until we pointed him in the direction of the Puok district. You have to go through dusty laterite roads and a nondescript lane to get there but the Angkor Silk Farm is actually in a sizeable compound with several wooden workshops fronting row upon row of mulberry trees, with a placard in front of each one to indicate the different species.

We later found out that 18 species are grown at the farm, and besides a homegrown variety, they are also imported from places like China and Japan. Each species can be distinguished from the shape and size of its leaves, which are wafer-thin and delicate.

Meth Thong, who had just finished his lunch when we arrived, was more than glad to take us around.

“Mulberry leaves are natural food for silkworms to induce them to spit out their saliva and spin themselves into a cocoon,” he said.

At one of the workshops, staff were sorting out the different types of leaves and cutting them into fine pieces before scattering them over silkworm eggs that were laid in baskets.

These eggs are also covered up with cloth to keep them warm and to prevent flies or mosquitoes from attacking them.

A picture chart on one of the walls informs visitors of the life cycle of a silkworm.

“First, there’s the cocoon,” explained Meth. “After five days, the larvae inside hatches and become moths.

“After that, the male and female moths will mate within four to five hours, and once the eggs are laid the adult moths will die.

“These eggs will be incubated for 12 days, before they turn grey and the silkworms break out to feed on the mulberry leaves.”

A female moth can lay between 250 and 300 yellow eggs each time. The baby silkworms mature in four different stages; at each stage, the worms eat for three days and sleep for one day so their skin can shed and they can continue growing.

It is during the final growing stage that the worms spin themselves into cocoons to start the life cycle all over again.

To protect them, the wriggling silkworms are placed inside a tightly closed room, lined with mosquito netting.

Meth said 80% of the silkworms bred are used to extract silk thread, while the remaining 20% are kept to ensure continuous breeding and reproduction.

“Cambodian silkworms are unique, as they are yellow in colour compared to white ones in other countries,” he said.

In one of the workshops, the cocoons are dipped into boiling water and gently prodded to extract the raw thread. Once this process, called degumming, is done, the cocoon goes into another boiling pot to have the fine silk layer fished out.

One of the women working on this was happily munching away on some of the boiled worms.

She gestured to me to try one of her afternoon tidbits, and after much hesitation I popped one into my mouth. It had a rather watery texture, with a slightly salty aftertaste that lingered. It was not something I would try again!

Further down the line, women were spooling the extracted thread and wrapping it on big wheels to give it more tension.

Many of the women, said Meth, are rural local folks who have the opportunity to make a living from their skills and revive an ancient tradition and heritage.

According to Artisans d’ Angkor, the company responsible for running this farm and other skills workshops for local people in Siem Reap, silk weaving was introduced in Cambodia in the 13th century thanks to the Silk Road that once traversed South-East Asia. The craft is practised by women in rural villages using traditional looms set up below their stilted houses during the dry season when they are not working in the fields.

Another fascinating stage in the silk-making is when colour is added to the thread. The farm uses both chemical and natural dyes - the latter involves boiling ingredients like tree barks and rusty nails - items you would never think of.

During the weaving process, women dexterously use the tie-dye-and-dry technique that requires dyeing the weft thread (the one on the width of the fabric) to prepare the pattern.

For every extra colour included in the fabric, the tie-dye-and-dry step has to be repeated, and Meth said it takes between two and three days to dry one colour, depending on the weather.

“Silk in Cambodia is mostly woven by hand. It’s a time-consuming and meticulous process, but it’s a skill that Cambodians know best and something we must preserve.

“It’s our heritage, and one that we are proud to share with the world.”

Visitors can purchase handmade items like shawls, purses, apparel and even pillowcases at the Artisans d’Angkor boutique, which are produced straight from the weaving looms.

Prices are a little steep, but if you see first-hand the hours of labour and complex handiwork that go into every thread, you may find it’s all well worth the money you pay.

The Angkor Silk Farm is open daily from 7am to 5pm. Guided tours are available in Khmer, English, French and Japanese, and are provided free of charge but a small token is always appreciated. For details, visit www.artisansdangkor.com.

Couple sells handmade scarves to benefit Cambodian children

December 23, 2007
By PETE FOWLER
garfield county correspondent
Summit Daily News (Colorado, USA)

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — It started two years ago on the beach in Sihanoukville, Cambodia.

Eva Jankovsky and Ryan Newberry, a couple who live in Glenwood Springs, were on vacation. They met kids who wandered the beach during the day, selling fruit, sarongs, bracelets and other trinkets.

“We were wondering why they didn’t go to school and they told us they went to school at night,” Jankovsky said.

She and Newberry went to the Regent School the kids attended and met with the principal. They learned the kids worked during the days to support poor families.

“We just kind of fell in love with them,” Jankovsky said. “We decided that we wanted to help make sure that they were all able to go to school.”

She said they observed families living in shacks made from random items, with no running water, electricity, or toilets and showers connected to homes.

“I didn’t want to put my own biases on what they were going through, because that's how it works there, but it’s sad to see the kids not have a childhood,” Jankovsky said. “The families can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone pay for their kids to go to school.”

The couple felt compassion for the kids, who seemed like they’d rather be playing than working all day to support their families. After being affected by that trip, Jankovsky said they began donating some of their own money to help 10 of the kids pay for school.

They decided they could do more and filed for nonprofit status about a year ago, Jankovsky said, but things really took off after a recent trip back to Cambodia in May. Jankovsky and Newberry had seen colorful scarves made of Cambodian silk, which they realized they could buy in bulk and sell in Colorado.

“That's when we realized we can really help these kids,” she said. “We went back to Cambodia and got 1,000 of these silk scarves, so we brought them back and started selling them to people, and it’s been really successful.”

They've sold around 600 of them so far, and a group of students at the University of Colorado in Boulder is helping to market them. The scarves are accented by intricate designs that seem to hover below or somehow stand apart from the rest of the pattern.

“They’re 100 percent Cambodian silk,” Jankovsky said. “They're really soft, really colorful.”

She said all the proceeds go to the Regent School via bank transfers to the school’s account. Jankovsky and Newberry have a relationship with the school principal, who sends pictures and reports on the kids’ progress, she added.

Jankovsky said there’s no free education available in Sihanoukville, so she hopes the scarf sales will send more kids to school. The couple also hopes to obtain funds to construct a new playground and set up an Internet connection in the school.

Anyone interested in the scarves or the efforts can visit www.myspace.com/sihanoukvillekids or call (303) 594-2238 or (720) 352-2095.

“It’s really exciting to see where it goes,” Jankovsky said. “Hopefully people want to help us.”

Cambodian, Chinese companies ink silk deal

Sep 13, 2007
DPA

Phnom Penh - A Cambodian and a Chinese company have inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) which will see Cambodian land cultivated to breed silk worms and a factory built to ship the raw product to China, local media said Thursday.

The MoU to cultivate mulberry plantations was signed between Cambodia's Tanimex Company Ltd and Chongqing Wintus (New Star) Trade Development Ltd, which lists Liangping Wintus Silk & Textile Ltd as its subsidiary partner, the Khmer-language daily Rasmei Kampuchea reported.

The Chinese companies are recognized by the China Chamber of Commerce and representatives from both governments were present at the signing ceremony, held Wednesday in the capital, the paper reported.

Chongqing Wintus will assist in setting up commercial mulberry farms to breed and raise the silk worms in the southern coastal province of Kampot, about 180 kilometres south-west of the capital.

The aim is for a Cambodian factory to process the silk cocoons for export, the paper quoted quoted Tanimex director Tann Sophanarith as saying.

'The ultimate aim is for a factory to be set up for processing within a very short space of time,' Sophanarith was reported as saying.

Chongqing Wintus has been operating the same business in neighboring Laos, Thailand and Vietnam for the past six years, but the success of the One Village One Product initiative finally enticed it into Cambodia.

The project is expected to boost local employment opportunities, cutting down the need for villagers to move to the city in search of work and boosting the local economy.

Chongqing is a municipality in China's central Sichuan province with a population of around 32 million people and a thriving textile industry.

It was unclear as yet how much Cambodian land would be put under cultivation or what production targets had been set.

Cambodian silk production is currently limited but the quality is world renowned.

The International Monetary Fund and other institutions as well as the Cambodian government itself have said that the country's rapid economic growth is endangered by its narrow economic base and that alternative industries to those such as garments and construction must be established to reinforce the domestic economy against possible global trends.

'I am sunlight, not moonlight'

Chanta Nguon shops for raw silk in Phnom Penh (Photo: Chris LeBoutillier)

Thursday, August 16, 2007
Marketplace
National Public Radio (USA)

Click here to listen to the show

Meet a woman who's trying to get Cambodia a piece of the action in the international silk trade. The silk empire she's stitched together is the biggest employer in her province. Rachel Louise Snyder reports.

Transcript of the story:

Kai Ryssdal: Break down the global economy and what do you have left? Get past enormous multinational corporations and smaller domestic companies, and you've got people getting up and going to work every day. Our monthly series, Working, takes us into the lives of individuals in the global economy.

In the international silk trade, the Big Three are India, China and Thailand. Today, we meet a woman who's trying to get Cambodia a piece of that action. The silk empire that she's stitched together is the biggest employer in her province. Rachel Louise Snyder brings us the story of Chanta Nguon.

-------------------

Rachel Louise Snyder: Chanta Nguon is a small woman, about 5 feet tall. But she's the economic epicenter of the remote Stung Treng province. So when there's talk about her, the effect can be whopping.

Over breakfast at a sidewalk café one morning, she tells me about a merchant whose disturbing dream about her shook up the locals.

Chanta Nguon: The coffee seller just run to me, "Oh, you still alive! The ghost sleep last night said you die!" I said, "What?"

She doesn't put much stock in ghost gossip. But she's got dreams of her own. Like starting a global business in a nearly illiterate region, where trappings of modernity — like electricity — are scarce.

At 45, Chanta is the picture of elegance, in flowing skirts and dark shades, driving down a red, dusty road on her motorbike to work.

Inside this creaky fence is the four-building silk compound called SWDC, for Stung Treng Women's Development Center. She started this with her husband, Chan.

The spinners use old bicycle rims to spool the thread.

This morning, Chanta rushes past two bright wooden workshops for spinners and weavers, past a kindergarten she built for weavers' children to a corner of the compound, where three young women use bamboo paddles to stir raw silk in boiling dye.

Nguon: So beautiful. This is my latest color.

She calls it:

Nguon: Chili. Yeah? Ripe chili.

Dramatic color is Chanta's genius. Each scarf has layers of subtle hues that change with the light.

Chanta's brand of colorful scarves and pillows are called Mekong Blue. She sells them for $16 to $20, and they end up in fancy boutiques in Germany, France, Poland, Japan and the U.S., where they go for $90 to $100 apiece.

In Mekong Blue's first year, they made $2,500 with five looms. This year, on 33 looms, they'll make $60,000.

While most businesses move toward mechanization, Chanta finds her operation works better with more hands and fewer machines. She once calculated that weavers walk over nine miles, in 11-foot intervals, just separating individual threads to prepare the looms.

Other things are harder to calculate.

Synder: How long does it take to make one average-sized scarf?

Nguon: So first, we spend one hour to wash the silk and one or two days to set up the warp. It just half of it, they need another seven days to finish. For that process, they spend another five days.

Snyder: So how . . . I've lost track, how many days are we up to?

Nguon: Eleven to 12 days.

Snyder: For a scarf.

Nguon: No! To start to weave the scarf.

The grand total? Fifteen days. Unless:

Nguon: You see the pattern, the flower pattern? That's another nine days. But if they make a mistake, then they spend another week to remove everything.

This is obsessive-compulsive work. Sixty full-time women earn $50 to $100 a month, where the country average is $25.

But for the women who work here, it's not just about money. It's about status and education.

Nguon: If we can help woman to have her own income, just automatically she, her value will improve — in the family, in the society.

Her life and her business evolved out of tragedy. During the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge forced the population into farm labor in the countryside. They abolished money and personal freedom. Families were torn apart.

Nguon: One of my brothers, he was taken away. And we don't know if he still alive or he die. We just lost him.

This disastrous social experiment killed an estimated million and a half people.

Chanta and her mother fled to Vietnam, where they spent 10 years. She spent nine more years in a refugee camp on the Thai border. There, she got an education — first in English, then in women's empowerment while working for Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders. She met her husband, Chan, in the camp. And in 1993, they returned to Cambodia.

At home, she meets her friends and family to cook a simple dinner. Here is where she transforms herself from CEO to friend, mother, wife. She washes dishes in a metal bowl and enlists help from her son.

Nguon: Oh, we need banana leaf, Johan. Can you help mama cut it?

Chanta is trained to be something else — not quite Western, not quite Khmer. She's comfortable in charge, at work or at home.

But such confidence means she doesn't fit with village women. So foreigners on temporary contracts for various charities fill her friendship void. But the faces always change. The first time, she says:

Nguon: We become very close friend, and then they left, and I feel sad again. But it just happened again and again. So every year, I have a new friend, and I lose some friends.

Today's menu is Vietnamese crepes. In the background, a radio plays Khmer music. Chanta tries to teach her two friends to fry paper-thin crepes.

Nguon: Is it hot enough, Ali?

The first crepe crumples.

Nguon: That's not Khmer at all.

As Chanta tries to teach her foreign friends Khmer customs, she sometimes struggles with them herself. It's made it tougher for her husband.

For the first 10 years of their marriage, Chan made the decisions. And she stayed quietly at home. But after a while, Chanta felt like she couldn't breathe.

At first, he fought her change.

Nguon: We compare Asian woman with moonlight in the family. Mean soft, cool, quiet. So I live 10 years, my first 10 years of marriage like that. I couldn't speak loudly, and I couldn't laugh loudly. But after 10 years, I feel it's not me at all. So I start to fight with my husband. I want to be myself. Why I can't laugh, why I can't speak loudly? So I told him, I am sunlight, not moonlight.

Ryssdal: Rachel Louise Snyder lives and works in Cambodia. Her report was a co-production with Homelands Productions.

Cambodia: The Silk Grandmothers

Weaving a new life from a lost art

June 28, 2007
By Emily Taguchi
PBS Frontline World

Click here to view the PBS video

Growing up in Tokyo, Cambodia was never far from my conscience. At train stations, volunteers would ask commuters to empty their change to help one of the poorest countries in Asia. Public-service announcements on television encouraged donations and showed the wide eyes and gaunt faces of Cambodian children. Whenever I left food on my plate at the table, my mother would say, "Think about all of the hungry children in the world!"

Still, I was surprised when I read about Kikuo Morimoto, a well-known textile craftsman from Kyoto, Japan, who had moved to Cambodia to help revive the country's ancient practice of silk-making. Many Japanese people are well intentioned but feel more comfortable staying on the entrenched road before them than taking a different, sometimes extraordinary, path. There is even an old saying in Japan that says, "A nail that sticks out will be hammered down."

Morimoto used to hand paint kimonos, and ran his own successful studio with apprentices in tow. But he began to question what that success meant to his life. In the early 1980s, it drew him to the Thai-Cambodian border, where he volunteered at refugee camps. It was there he discovered the beauty of Cambodian silk. "The red of the fabric burned a fierce impression on my eyes," he told me.

Cambodian silk-making is a traditional art that has been passed down through generations from mother to daughter. But Morimoto found the craft in danger of disappearing after decades of violence. When a United Nations mission in the 1990s led Morimoto to Cambodia, he met a few of the weavers. Many of the women were in their 70s and 80s and living in remote villages across the country -- they were the only ones left who knew the secrets of the craft.

During his initial research in Cambodia, Morimoto also found that those who still practiced the silk-making were paid just pennies for their painstaking work. As a fellow craftsman, Morimoto found that infuriating. "These grandmothers were so highly skilled, they should be given the chance to do work that matched their skills and be paid for it," he said.

When I arrived in Cambodia to report this story, I felt some of those same frustrations. Tourists swarm Angkor Wat before dawn -- nearly one million people visit the ancient temples every year, each paying at least $20 to enter and some as much as $60. But minutes away, people live alongside dirt roads, tending to their children and living in poverty. Many of the main streets are dotted with signs that clearly target tourists with warnings in multiple languages. The message? Paying minors for sex is a crime.

In 1996, starting with seven "silk grandmothers," as the women came to be known, Morimoto set up a silk production studio in the town of Siem Reap, which lies on the main tourist route to Angkor Wat. Today, more than 400 people work there, earning anywhere from $80 to $200 a month. It's a modest sum, but far more than the average Cambodian wage of $300 a year.

For the elderly women I met, silk weaving also offered a way of life that didn't violate their beliefs. Chan Sot, who joined Morimoto more than 10 years ago, has lived through great turmoil -- from the French colonial occupation, to U.S. bombardment, to the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror (a time when one in four Cambodians were killed). "Be a merchant, and cheat the customer by cheating the scales" -- as a Buddhist, that was not a value she wanted to live by. "With silk, there is no sacrilege," Chan Sot explained. "I always warned my children not to work where they have to commit sacrilege to make profit."

Today, with the help of Morimoto, a man with an appreciation of beauty and a sense of justice, Chan Sot says she has rediscovered the honorable work she wanted for herself and her daughter.

-----
Emily Taguchi is a journalist and filmmaker from Tokyo. She is currently working as a field producer and videographer for KQED public television in San Francisco. This is Taguchi's second story for FRONTLINE/World's Rough Cut series; her previous film, The Unforgotten War, about antagonism between Chinese and Japanese youth over the memories of World War II was completed in 2006. She is a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley School of Journalism.

Designer Aims to Please All Shapes and Sizes [- Cambodian silk]

Babs Lucus with a silk spinner artisan in Cambodia in 2006. Cambodian silk is made using ancient techniques, such as hand spinning and loom weaving. (Tanya Meyer)

May 11, 2007
By Kasia Fryklund
Special to The Epoch Times

It isn't often that someone comes along who has the power and drive to make a difference in the world, but Babs Lucus is convinced she can do precisely that.

What began as a passion for silk and design has, with Lucus' sense of creativity and innovation, turned into a stand for challenging what society has come to expect as the norm, especially when it comes to fashion. Located on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver, Babs Studio Boutique operates on the fundamental value of making "one difference at a time."

Lucus first became fascinated with silk and the other textiles she encountered while traveling in Cambodia. She has been in love with everything Asian ever since.

"I often joke around with people that I'm Asian on the inside and White on the outside," she laughs.

While in Cambodia, Lucus forged a strong connection with the local weavers, which inspired her to seek a way to assist them. She began to get in contact with many fare trade organizations and NGO's in the hopes making a difference in peoples' lives through creating an industry of silk weaving. She helps support the Artists of Cambodia organization, which creates employment for some of Cambodia's most vulnerable: landmine survivors, people with disabilities, and women.

Lucus travels to Cambodia twice a year to order silk supplies. The silk there is made using ancient techniques such as hand spinning and loom weaving, and is one of the most luxurious and sought after textiles in the world, she says.

Lucus has another passion, which is to depart from the "skinny model" ideal that the fashion industry promotes. She believes that clothes should fit each unique body type, and so two years ago she created a line that bridges the gap between petite and large sizes. She says her boutique is one of the only stores in Canada that carries such an extensive size range.

"I want to make clothes like everyone else does and make beautiful things that people adore and look beautiful in, but I also want to feel good about what I'm doing. Spreading a positive body image is part of the package," says Lucus.

A regular customer at Babs Studio Boutique, Zoe Ryan, says Lucus' creations have been effective in promoting a positive body image in women by "mixing a very trendy location with amazing clothes with a body positive message." "So many clothing lines for curvy, bigger women are so very boring and use only darker colours and unexciting fabrics," says Ryan. "Bab's designs and clothing celebrate all women and make all women feel beautiful when wearing these clothes."

Hoping to make a significant change in the way the fashion industry operates, Lucus has set out to find women who are not airbrushed or perfect, and who are "in touch with the meaning of life." To that end, she launched her first "Real Woman Contest" on National Woman's Day. The purpose of the contest is to celebrate and reward true and natural beauty so that "acceptance will be a common feeling we have for one another and for ourselves."

"I'm here to say that size really doesn't matter," says Lucus. "Beauty is from within, which is what we should be celebrating. It really isn't about the prizes, or being a model, or glory, but the courage and stepping up together."

The Moxie Murmur is another one of Lucus' endeavours. This little publication portrays something of her generous nature through a statement on the top left-hand corner that reads, "Our 2 cents, Yours Free." The Moxie Murmur was created as a way to provide a woman's perspective and to offer a local and positive outlook on life. The only articles allowed in the paper, says Lucus, are those which "provide a solution to whatever problem that is being addressed." Having been blessed with the gift of being both a leader and an inventor, Lucus feels she has the power to implement changes in society. Her designs are only the start of what promises to be a thriving career geared toward the betterment of humanity.