Store aids Sri Lankan village

A boutique at Ward Warehouse is extending a helping hand to a village more than 8,000 miles away.

Eden in Love owners Tanna and Bryson Dang won $25,000 earlier this year in a national video contest and decided to put most of their winnings into adopting a rural village.

They selected Nallathanniya in Sri Lanka and started a campaign last week to raise money through store promotions and silent auctions.

Eventually the Dangs hope to contribute about $75,000 to the village over the next five years.

They are working with the Adopt-a-Village project run by the Geneva-based Global Hope Network International, which connects businesses and nonprofit groups with the poorest villages in the world.

"Being a business owner allows me to use my business as a vehicle for change," said Tanna Dang, who also operates the Wedding Cafe, also in Ward Warehouse. "It launches us into the community in ways that many people don’t have the opportunity to do. That’s really why we’re here on Earth, is to do good. If I can teach my staff, my shoppers, my brides, that’s so empowering. We can change the world."

Eden in Love workers visited Nallathanniya last month and are sharing photos and video with shoppers.

The mountainous village in Sri Lanka’s central highlands is owned by a tea estate, which employs and houses most of the villagers. Workers are paid $1 to $1.50 per day to produce Ceylon tea, the country’s main export.

On a typical day, Nallathanniya’s women pick tea leaves for 10 to 12 hours, and men labor in a nearby warehouse where the tea is dried and processed, according to Global Hope Network. Poor living conditions and lack of clean water and nutritious food have led to illnesses that fester due to lack of medical care. Many children are unable to get an education because families can’t afford government-required uniforms and supplies, the group said.

Eden in Love’s donations will pay for a five-pronged program established by Global Hope Network to:

» Develop a clean water system for drinking, cooking and hygiene.

» Grow sufficient nutritious food to mitigate chronic hunger and malnutrition.

» Train villagers in sanitation, hygiene and disease prevention.

» Provide resources to generate dignified and sustainable family income.

» Improve access to primary-level education for all children.

Before adopting the village, Tanna Dang had worked closer to home with her nonprofit, Divas Doing Good. She donated more than 100 scarves to Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children’s Teen Cancer & Oncology Department and hosted a special night for the teens that included head-to-toe makeovers and a photo session earlier this year.

The group’s win in the national video contest, which featured the cancer teens’ makeover night, was a turning point for the Dangs, who decided to take their humanitarian work global.

In July they took three employees to Sri Lanka to visit their adopted village.

One unexpected highlight of the five-day trip was hearing the story of a man whose wife, the mother of two young children, had a life-threatening growth in her throat. The family didn’t have the $430 they needed to remove the growth, so the Eden in Love team gave them the cash for the operation.

The moment in which they tell the husband and wife about the donation through an interpreter is documented in a video soon to be on the Eden in Love website. The video shows the husband and wife bursting into tears, which sets off a chain reaction through the small group.

While in Sri Lanka, the Dang’s met Jeff Power, a Denver-based employee of Global Hope Network, who organized their trip and the continuing work in the village.

"Nobody can help the whole world, but every company can help one village transform itself," Power said. "We’re trying to break world poverty down into bite-size pieces. Our organization works with poorest-of-the-poor tribal groups that are the lowest rung of the ladder even in their own country."

Global Hope Network was founded by former Hawaii residents Hal and Lana Jones. Hal Jones was a Hawaii state representative in the 1980s.

Other Hawaii companies working with Global Hope Network include Grove Farm on Kauai, which adopted a village in Africa, and Hono­lulu-based aio — a media, technology, sports and food company founded by Duane Kurisu — which adopted villages in Ethiopia and India.

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On the Net:

» Sri Lanka trip video: vimeo.com/49834047