When I visited Treak in 2019 Salin (Treak Director) was planning to launch a social enterprise – COVID struck and her plans had to be shelved. As life to returns to a new normal Salin is working hard to make her dream a reality. It was such a pleasure to spend time with her in October as she planned the launch and we worked together to identify her goals and how volunteers might help.

Treak Creations in a new social business initiative by Treak Community Centre. The aim is to sell goods to generate income for the Centre and create employment for the villagers of Treak.

Because Salin is a trained and successful tailor and there is a well equipped sewing room on the Treak Community Centre site the first range to be sold will be sewn items.  Salin learnt to tailor – that was her road out of poverty – and she wants to share that skill and opportunity with women from the village whilst creating an income stream for the centre.

They have identified a range of products and will expand this as capacity grows.

Once the sewing range is well established and it has generated money for further investment Salin will extend the offer to cookery lessons, catering and other food products and to producing products from recycled plastic.

Treak Creations’ Objectives

• To provide employment to Treak villagers
• To conduct training programmes
• To raise funds for TCC through selling their products – be that sewing, cookery,recycled products or other means
• To enable children to attend state schools by providing affordable or subsidised school uniforms (whilst education is free – children cannot attend school if they do not have a uniform – many families cannot afford these)

Skills we are looking for:

• Mentoring
• Business planning
• Product design and pattern grading
• Marketing / Fundraising / Proposal Writing
• IT literacy
• Social media
• Web site design and maintenance
• Management skills such as Human resources and systems management and book keeping

If you would like to learn more about how you might be able to support this initiative please email dianne@travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk

Follow Treak Creations on Instagram to learn more about the goods you could buy to support this initiative – their dedicated website is currently being designed.

PS – The first two volunteers travel to Treak to work with Salin in January – so watch out for their news!