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A BBC report found that 80% of personal loans taken by UAE men were for wedding expenses, leading many to marry less demanding foreign women. In response, the government created a fund that provides financial aid to grooms who marry Emirati brides.

#UAE #Marriage Fund #Emirati weddings #personal loans #dowry #government support #cultural practices #financial assistance

An open letter to the U.S. Senate

Improve disabled American's financial stability with S.4102 - SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act

In the words of David Goldfarb on behalf of the Arc of the United States, "…we enthusiastically endorse S. 4102, the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, which would raise the amount of savings a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipient can keep for the first time in over thirty years. The mission of the Arc is to promote and protect the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and actively support their full inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetimes.

"SSI provides an extremely modest cash benefit, a maximum of $841 a month in 2022, for certain individuals with disabilities and older adults. In March 2022, nearly 7.6 million people: 4.3 million working-age individuals with disabilities; 1 million children with disabilities; and 2.3 million older adults relied on the program.

"Many individuals with IDD rely on the SSI program. In 2017, SSA estimated that approximately 19% of working-age SSI recipients possessed an intellectual disability. For many people with IDD, SSI is their only source of income without which they could become institutionalized or homeless.

"Unfortunately, the benefit’s low, outdated resource limit of $2,000 for individuals/$3,000 for couples does not allow people to save for emergencies, such as a leaky roof, car repair, or other unexpected expense. To make matters worse, the $2,000 limit does not adjust for inflation every year, and it has remained the same since 1989.

"The SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act would significantly improve the lives of SSI recipients, including people with IDD, by raising the asset limit to $10,000 per individual/$20,000 per couple. The legislation also adjusts that number for inflation every year, a critical element in 2 today’s inflationary environment. This will allow SSI beneficiaries to use their own savings to address needed emergencies when they arise.

"Thank you again for this critical legislation."

Truly his letter is phenomenal and applicable to many American citizens. I hope you too appreciate his mastery of diction, his compassion for his fellow American, and the truth in his words.

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Atlanta

So I’m a bit behind in keeping you all up to date on my fellowship travels in the US but I’ll get you up to speed over the next few days!

I started in Atlanta. What a big, sprawling city with so many magnificent big trees everywhere! It’s nearly as green as Singapore! I started with a visit to the Martin Luther King Memorial and was blessed to meet one of his old comrades whilst ther. What a start to the trip!

Fred from the Food Well Alliance, who exist to support community gardening activities in the city, spent a day showing me myriad community gardens of every denomination. So many diverse expressions of the same theme and so lovely to immerse myself in. This city really has it happening on the urban agriculture front despite the usual problems of lack of funding support in many spaces and difficulties with regulations but they just get on with it and keep growing- a joy to see!

The Food Well Alliance is lucky to have a strong funding base to support their work and they do a fabulous job of supporting gardens in many ways. I love their volunteer program where they take groups of predominantly students to gardens that need a hand and in the space of a day can transform spaces and get big projects done. There is so much scope for programs like this to be implemented in Australia.

I really enjoyed my time with these guys and it was a pleasure to present to them on our experience in Australia and what I have been learning on my travels. Keep growing Atlanta! You guys are amazing!

#community gardens #food security #growing food #government support #local food #food #nonprofit

Paris

It was such a pleasure to meet with two fabulous women in Paris doing so much great work to support community gardens. Laurence Baudelet is the Project Coordinator for Graine de Jardins and also the legend who kick started the City Of Paris’s Main Verte (green thumb) program which is now managed by Claire Alexandre.

I met with Claire at one of the cities big parks where they were participating a garden festival for the weekend. There were people and children everywhere! It was so lovely of Claire to take a large chunk of time out from the crowds to explain their work and the general community gardening scene in Paris. Turns out the City of Paris provides exceptional support for community gardens which was a nice surprise and another great example to lend support to our call for the same in Australia.

Laurence and I had met previously at the conference in Berlin so in some ways it was like meeting up with an old friend (funny how anyone you’ve known longer than two days feels like that when you travel solo!) What she doesn’t know about community gardening in France probably isn’t worth knowing and she was just wonderful to talk to and shared so much about the whole scene in France. It was great to get a lot of the history of how community gardening has evolved over the past 20 years and not just in France. She has a pretty good overview of the whole scene in the EU so I was blessed to spend time learning from her.

Thank you ladies for your time and energy as it was greatly appreciated and I know we’ll be keeping in touch. And great job City of Paris - keep up the amazing support for your gardens!

#community gardens #government support #food security #local food #growing food

Vienna

I had a wonderful time in Vienna with the crew from Gartenpolylog. It started with a berry planting session at a fabulous garden in front of some new apartment buildings where green space and community growing has been incorporated into the design. Well done to the developers for recognising the importance of including such important green spaces into their plans.

I then went on to visit a couple of fabulous gardens the following day. One on an old coal train line and the other was a very large garden by Australian standards who were celebrating their 10 year anniversary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people having so much fun in a community garden before! It was a wonderful celebration which I was honoured to be invited to. Thank you to both gardens for inviting me.

The guys at Gartenpolylog do a great job of supporting community gardens in Austria although once again I find that they lack the government recognition of the importance of community growing. This obviously frustrates their efforts somewhat but doesn’t stop them! And everyone is keen to link up ongoing internationally. I truly hope that this helps to give us all and the work we do a stronger voice. If only all governments could be as supportive as those of Wales and Singapore. So far they are the only ones worth mentioning which is a pity.

#community gardens #food security #government support #growing food #local food #climate mitigation

Govt Support: What Helps, What Still Hurts

Morning at the Exhibition Counter

At a craft fair in Hyderabad, an elderly Cheriyal artist arranges his paintings on the table. He wipes the dust off a small mask, adjusts its position, and sits down with a quiet sigh. The hall is slowly filling. Banners read “Handicraft Promotion,” “GI Products,” and “Traditional Arts of India.”

For a moment, the artist watches a young officer walk past with a clipboard, giving instructions to stall workers. He nods respectfully. Without the government fair, he would not be here. Without this platform, his work would stay inside his house, unseen.

But exhibitions are temporary, and life continues long after the closing day.

This is where support begins — and also where it stops.

Where This Craft Came From

Cheriyal painting is the child of Telangana’s storytelling tradition. Before cinema, before textbooks, before newsprint, storytellers carried scrolls from village to village. They sang episodes of Ramayana, Mahabharata, caste histories, and folk legends. The scroll unrolled slowly, like a curtain revealing destiny. Children memorized gods through faces, not alphabets. Farmers learned values through characters, not essays.

This is how Telangana taught culture — out loud, together, after harvests and festivals.

So this craft did not begin as décor. It began as memory.

Making Something That Cannot Be Mass Produced

A single painting involves:

• tamarind seed paste boiled and dried • white mud sieved and mixed • surfaces prepared and sun-dried • outlines drawn from memory • natural colours ground or mixed • brushes made from squirrel hair or bamboo • drying after each layer • borders and scenes added slowly

Time is not an ingredient. Time is the craft itself.

Machines can copy colour, but not patience.

Lives That Carry the Tradition

Most Cheriyal artists do not work in studios. They work in houses where workshops and bedrooms share walls. Children play near drying scrolls. Family members split tasks — some prepare surfaces, some mix colours, some draw borders, some talk to customers. Lunch and deadlines collide.

No one here calls themselves “entrepreneur.” They say simply: “Ithi maa kala.” This is our art.

What the Fast World Doesn’t See

The struggle begins not in painting, but in selling.

Orders arrive late. Payments delay. Middlemen negotiate hard. Online markets demand discounts. Customers compare hand-painted scrolls to factory décor. Young artists leave for safer jobs. Income depends on seasons and festivals, not salaries.

The irony is heavy: the world praises handmade values while buying machine-made speed.

Where Government Support Helps

Government intervention has not been absent. In fact, several things genuinely make a difference:

✔ GI tag gave legitimacy and pride ✔ State awards / national awards brought recognition ✔ Handicraft exhibitions & fairs opened public platforms ✔ Cluster development programs improved training ✔ Artisan ID cards allowed participation in official schemes ✔ Scholarships & pensions for master artists created dignity ✔ Documentation work preserved techniques and stories ✔ Museum collaborations expanded visibility ✔ Craft promotion days (like Handloom Day) created awareness

These things are real. They matter. They help artists stand straighter.

For many families, government fairs are the only steady sales channel left.

Where Government Support Still Hurts

But the other side is quiet and heavy:

✖ Benefits are uneven — some families access them, others never hear of them. ✖ Exhibitions are occasional — income disappears between events. ✖ Paperwork is complex — artists struggle with forms, not imagination. ✖ Marketing support is weak — awareness doesn’t reach customers. ✖ Digital infrastructure is fragile — many cannot navigate online selling. ✖ Raw material support is minimal — pigments and wood cost more every year. ✖ Cluster programs end quickly — training stops before livelihood stabilizes. ✖ Recognition does not equal income — awards bring applause, not salaries.

One artist said it simply: “Sarkar help chesthundhi, kaani poorthiga kaadhu.” The government helps, but not fully.

Support arrives at the front, but leaks through the bottom.

Why This Craft Still Matters

Cheriyal matters because Telangana needs memory. Not digital nostalgia, but real cultural lineage — in colour, in story, in community.

It teaches:

• patience • listening • interpretation • cultural confidence • ecological respect • handmade dignity

It is sustainable without trying to be trendy. It is educational without being preachy. It holds identity without aggression.

A state without its crafts becomes a map without personality.

What Customers Feel When They Encounter It Fully

When people finally understand Cheriyal, they don’t ask for discounts. They ask for meaning.

They say things like:

“This reminds me of my grandparents.” “I can’t believe this is still being done by hand.” “My kids have never seen stories like this before.” “This feels like Telangana in colour.”

That moment — not policy, not marketing — keeps the craft alive.

A Gentle Awareness, Not a Complaint

The point is not to blame the government. Nor to glorify it. Nor to accuse customers. Nor to romanticize struggle.

The point is to acknowledge reality:

Art survives on dignity, not pity. Craft survives on continuity, not charity. Culture survives on understanding, not slogans.

Government support is necessary. But society’s attention is equally needed.

Closing

In the end, government support for crafts like Cheriyal is like irrigation for a field. It can bring water. It can nourish. It can create conditions. But it cannot do the ploughing, sowing, weeding, or harvesting.

That labour still belongs to the artisan.

Until both sides meet — policy from above and respect from below — the craft will continue to walk forward, slow but steady, carrying both pride and struggle in the same bag.

To know more about this living heritage, visit: https://handembriderynagaram.com

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