Industry News

Serger donation helps Chimila Indians in Colombia

AllBrands.com recently strengthened international relations with the Chimila Indians in Colombia when he gave them a Janome serger.

The opportunity arose when John Douthat received an e-mail from Bruce McDowell at the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Tenth Presbyterian Church has been building a children’s home in Santa Marta where the Chimila children are being housed, fed, clothed and educated.

According to Bruce, “The Chimila Indians are an indigenous tribe in Colombia that has been displaced from their lands by the ongoing guerrilla war. They are living in very poor conditions with inadequate housing, food and clothing and no education for their children.”

The goal is to also train them in skills they can use to become self-supporting, such as sewing items that can be sold. The serger will help them as they work toward this goal.

Bruce specifically requested the Janome 634D Mylock serger that he had seen on the AllBrands.com Web site (www.allbrands.com/products) as the machine to donate to the Chimila Indians.

“We e-mailed Janome with a request to use coop funds to take this machine out of our Baton Rouge inventory and ship it to them,” said John. “Bruce later e-mailed us the heartwarming picture of Chimila Indian children at a sewing table with the Janome serger.”

It is always nice to know that the outreach efforts of VDTA dealers and leading sewing machine manufacturers are being put to such good use in international relations.

Reprinted from SQE Professional, January 2008