This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

SPIRAL Foundation Encourages Shopping From the Heart

The Pacific Palisades-based organization held a holiday boutique featuring handmade gifts that benefit humanitarian causes.

Brightly colored baskets woven from candy and noodle wrappers, handbags and totes sewn from salvaged plastic bottles, bowls interlaced with spiral designs made from recovered telephone wire were all on display at the SPIRAL Foundation boutique on Dec. 10-11.

All proceeds from the handmade, eco-friendly items went to humanitarian causes. So, shoppers could spend, spend, spend without feeling guilty.

“Spinning Potential into Resources and Love” is the mission of the foundation started by Palisadian Marichia Simcik Arese after a trip to Vietnam in 1997.

Find out what's happening in Pacific Palisadeswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“I witnessed still so much of the destruction that had happened during the war,” said Arese in her rolling European accent. “And out of that, the very strong desire came up of trying to do something to make a difference.”

In the foundation’s legendary origin story, Arese met a group of students working in a restaurant in Hanoi. They were using their down time to make picture frames out of aluminum cans, cutting the metal with scissors and rolling it into curlicues with knitting needles. Sales of the souvenirs to tourists would help defray the cost of their education.

Find out what's happening in Pacific Palisadeswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The students talked Arese into purchasing 50 of the frames to resell in America. When she agreed, those enterprising kids sent her 350 instead. Arese began selling to family, friends and the PTA. She even packed a shopping cart full of frames and, along with her then-seven year old son, found customers at the supermarket. Arese managed to sell the whole consignment, raising $7,100.

After she sent back the proceeds, the students informed her that they were only keeping some of the money and were sending the rest to 10 orphan Hmong girls in the northern part of the country who didn’t have a school. Inspired, Arese returned to Vietnam, intent on meeting the final beneficiaries of her effort.

“And then is when the idea that it was possible for poor people to help other poor people was born,” she said

At last weekend’s Holiday Bazaar, the entire ground floor of the Pacific Palisades home Arese shares with her husband James Simcik, a sound editor, was, as it always is, devoted to displaying the foundation’s wares. Room after room was a riot of color. Bedspreads and tablecloths were draped across sofas and chairs. Rows of tables were covered with woven totes, wire bowls, and placemats; pencils made from magazines, doormats that used to be candy wrappers, and jewelry fashioned from grocery bags were beautifully arrayed. Prices ranged from as low as $3 to $120.

Arese, who holds a doctorate degree in art history and had been working as a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, started traveling back and forth to Vietnam to create projects that would allow the very poor to make a living and help contribute to their own communities. She got the idea that all the detritus and garbage piled up on the streets could be repurposed into beautiful objects.

“It was the cheapest way to start a small project with the idea of giving work to people that would generate funds. And these funds would be returned to others in greater need,” she explained.

The SPIRAL Foundation, together with a hospital in Hue, Vietnam, now supports the Healing the Wounded Heart Shop. The Hue shop employs 40 craftspeople who are deaf and mute or paralyzed. They create the beautiful gifts sold by the foundation from garbage collected and cleaned by individuals who are also paid by the organization. The money raised from sales of their handcrafts has funded heart surgeries for 350 Vietnamese children.

“We’ve returned more than $1,700,000 for humanitarian aid projects for Vietnam and Nepal in 13 years,” Arese said with pride.

According to the foundation’s website, “Currently 1,000 Vietnamese and Nepalese are employed with fair wages based on an hourly rate and not on piece-work.”

Palisadian Diane Brigham, her hands full of potential purchases, said she has been doing her holiday shopping at the SPIRAL Foundation “since the beginning.”

“I’m shopping here for two reasons. One is the stuff is fabulous,” she said beaming. “The idea of recycled materials looking so beautiful really is great. And the other thing is that I know it’s giving back and helping to support people in need. And I just feel really good that my dollars that are going for gifts can even give another kind of gift, too.”

Fiscal transparency is of the utmost importance to the foundation, which posts its financials on its website. Arese affirmed that 98 percent of the foundation’s income is generated by sales from the SPIRAL Foundation Gift Line. The other two percent is from voluntary contributions. 100 percent of net proceeds are donated to humanitarian aid projects.

The foundation doesn’t solicit donations, said Arese, “because we feel that it’s much more empowering and much more positive to generate work and then return the proceeds to benefit the workers and the local community.”

In Nepal, the foundation has partnered for eight years with Himalaya Health Care, which found SPIRAL on the Internet. They wanted to help very poor people in remote villages develop income-generating projects. The SPIRAL Foundation helped establish a craft workshop and paid for the health care and education of participating artisans. Support went back to the villages in the form of medicine, salaries for health providers and teachers and funding for literacy programs and libraries.

“We’ve built an entire hospital in Nepal that serves 300,000 people,” said Arese. The workshop has now opened a store in Kathmandu and is on its way to becoming self-sustaining, in keeping with the goals of the SPIRAL Foundation.

And as if this weren’t enough, “There’s more than this,” Arese said, “because now we’ve started a project in Rome with refugees.”

Just this past summer, the SPIRAL Foundation helped 10 African refugees, who were living in the Roma Termini train station, set up a plastic recycling project right there in the station.

The project, now known as SPIRAL REFUGEE scART, has won the patronage of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The commission buys large quantities of the bookmarks, portfolios and jewelry that the artisans produce then re-sells the items at a small mark-up. It uses the proceeds to help other refugees. In addition, the Jesuit Refugee Service has given the program “a beautiful space” so the artists have been able to move their equipment out of the train station.

The SPIRAL Foundation has three open houses a year but shoppers are welcome by appointment any time. Just phone 310-459-6671 to go and browse the Vance Street boutique.

Go to the SPIRAL Foundation website to see stars like Helen Mirren, George Clooney and Nicole Kidman admiring the bowls, baskets and accessories. Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen are also supporters.

  • For more information about the SPIRAL Foundation, click here.
We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?