The founders of Chekutty are now getting ready to trademark their unique doll before launching the product officially in the market on October 2 in Kochi. It would become functional soon, she said.Ravaged looms and bundles of destroyed fabric, which were all ready for Onam sales and tears of hundreds of weavers who had toiled hard for months to make them ready persuaded the entrepreneurs to find out a sustainable solution for them.”It&Clean room windows39;s not made by one person or one organisation.Thiruvananthapuram: A tiny handmade doll made out of soiled and damaged fabric has become a symbol of survival and hope for a group of weavers, whose dreams and livelihood were washed away by the floods last month in Kerala. But the same soiled stock is now expected to fetch them much more through the cloth dolls.So Chekutty can be read as the child who survives the mud and dirt of floods.They chlorinate the textile, boil it to disinfect and convert them to Chekutty, the handmade dolls, Lakshmi Menon, a co-founder of the initiative, said.
No Chekutty would look alike. It can also be read as the kid of Chennamangalam,” Lakshmi told news agency PTI.We have only helped them clean the soiled fabric. The money is directly credited to the Society’s account,” he told PTI. Other than the basic steps # on making, the painting, touch-ups and decoration is all up to the individual doll maker, she said.Lakshmi herself collected soiled sarees from the weavers and trained volunteers. The other things including doll making and sales are being done by the entrepreneurs.”The original Chekutty dolls, made of Chendamangalam handloom, will have a trademark and a small write up attached to it..The entrepreneur said the beauty of Chekutty dolls is the crowdsourcing.She said the weavers had no option but to burn the severely damaged textile. At least 360 odd dolls can be made out of a six-metre saree.With the support of hundreds of volunteers, they are now collecting sarees that had been left soiled and destroyed beyond reuse in the looms of Chendamangalam, post floods.
Chekutty has stains.Cutting across geographical barriers, people are placing bulk orders through websites, Facebook and WhatsApp for these dolls after coming to know about it through the media. One of the seven Chendamangalam weavers’ co-operative societies, with which the doll-makers are associated, has already received Rs five lakh through online booking.An active participant in the flood relief work, 42-year-old Lakshmi came to know about the plight of the weavers from her friend Gopinath Parayil, a tourism entrepreneur.The soft handmade dolls can be used as a key chain, wall decor or tied to a handbag and would always serve as a reminder of the sacrifices and resurrection of a state which was ravaged by a murderous flood, the entrepreneur added.. That is much higher than they receive through the sale of saree,” she said.The Kochi-based IT hub Infopark had adopted the Chekutty dolls’ movement to support its sales.The weavers were also happy about the idea as at least their months’ long labour would not go in vain. So we had to wash the fabric repeatedly to make them safe for re-use,” she said. Finally, we came up with the idea of doll making,” Lakshmi said.’Cheru’ means mud and ‘kutty’ means child in Malayalam.A month after the deluge had ravaged Chendamangalam, a traditional handloom village in Ernakulam district, the weavers are pinning hope on ‘Chekutty’, dolls fashioned with handloom material spoiled in the floods, to rebuild their lives.”A normal handloom saree may fetch Rs 1300-1500 in the market.
Demands are now pouring in from across the globe for these dolls, conceptualised and designed by two social entrepreneurs to help the weavers raise funds out of the damaged fabric stock through crowdsourcing.Ajith Kumar, Secretary, Handloom Weavers Co-operative Society, Karimpadam in Chendamangalam said they had already received Rs five lakh in their account through the online booking for the ‘chekutty dolls’. We plan to do the trademarking exercise with the support of over 500 volunteers at the Maharaja’s College campus in Kochi on September 30,” Lakshmi added.Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan recently came forward supporting the unique initiative.”That means, dolls fashioned out of a single saree can fetch them up to Rs 9,000. But she represents each one of us who survived the floods.Both Lakshmi and Gopinath shared the idea through social media platforms and invited interested persons to volunteer their services in doll making and the response was immense. I am so happy to see that our doll has now emerged as the mascot of Kerala, which braved the devastating floods,” she said. We had no option but to think of something to bring back the smiles on their faces.They also created a website, detailing the objective of ‘Chekutty’ dolls.”Even after chlorination and boiling, the clothes had that stink left by the murky flood waters.The entire amount raised through sales of Chekutty would go to livelihood programmes envisaged by the handloom weavers’ cooperative society of Chendamangalam, said Lakshmi, who runs ‘Pure Living’, a social enterprise focusing on up-cycled and recycled products.”The scenes at the village shook both of us. She took many sarees home, chlorinated and boiled them to disinfect them.”Chekutty has scars..
A mobile app was launched in Silicon Valley on September 21 to take the desi dolls to a larger global audience. We plan to put it up for sale at Rs 25 each,” she said.Chendamangalam is a traditional handloom weaving cluster located over 35 km away from Kochi
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