Sale of Zabaleen handicrafts
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Suzan and Nimet Habachy have been selling handicrafts made by women from an impoverished community of garbage collectors in Cairo for the past 15 years. The items are an ever-changing assortment of brightly hued rag rugs, patchwork quilts and other crafts pieced together out of unused, donated fabrics. The money from their sale returns to Egypt, financing a weaving workshop, a day care center and other services.
This year, the sale began Wednesday at Calvary-St. George’s Church, at 61 Gramercy Park North in Manhattan, and is to run in the afternoon and evenings until Saturday.
Next weekend, the sisters will take a batch of crafts to a sale in Summit, N.J. Each summer, they set up a table in Chautauqua, N.Y. They have road-tripped to Louisville, Ky., Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., to sell items at Presbyterian church conventions.
The sisters try to raise about $30,000 each year, enough to provide about a third of the finances for the weaving school, run by an Egyptian group, the Association for the Protection of the Environment, and build a new workshop with about 12 looms.
Excerpted from an article by Sharon Otterman for The New York Times
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