A money-saving advantage of living in Dublin is that you don't need to purchase an alarm clock. Almost every morning at 6.30am I am woken by yet another plastic bag being pushed through my letterbox by previously unheard of charities who possess no proper address and only a mobile phone number, writes Dermot Bolger
Many absolutely bona-fide Irish charities collect clothes and books in this way and long may they continue to do so. But an interesting BBC documentary last year highlighted how in one case in Britain much of the money raised vanished into a black hole known as administrative expenses.
It is therefore nice to mention a tiny agency whose entire overheads last year came to just €536. Every other euro made on sales of handcrafted dolls found its way back to a co-operative run by female workers in the Philippines who have escaped the regime of sweatshop labour - except for $2,000 donated to the Preda Foundation, founded in the Philippines by the Irish priest Shay Cullen, which works for the elimination of the sexual trade in children.
The Doll House project was originally administered by a Dublin woman, Margarita Synnott, from her front room. Its origins, however, go back to Drimnagh nights in the early 1960s when her sister, Ann McCarthy, began collecting stamps as a young girl. One page was blank in her album - Japan - and the simplest way to solve this was to advertise for a Japanese pen pal. The response was so enormous that soon not only did Ann McCarthy have a Japanese pen pal, but every girl in her class had one. Ann's young pen pal wanted to be a doctor and, in time, won a scholarship to study in Europe. Ann's curiosity made her invite him to visit Dublin. He stayed for six weeks, after which Anne McCarthy from Drimnagh decided to become Ann McCarthy Fukumoto from Japan.
Years later, through her own daughters' school in Japan, Ann Fukumoto discovered how a number of women from Tala (pronounced as "Tallaght") - one of the poorest slum areas in the Philippines - had set up their own cottage industry with the help of Carmelite sisters. Previously the only local work available had been in packed sweatshops. But with the help of the nuns, a handful of sweatshop workers, sick of being exploited and never seeing their children, began to make exquisite hand-stitched dolls in their homes. With mud floors, however, most stock was destroyed in the rainy season and they needed a workshop, not run as a sweatshop this time but as a collective enterprise.
They began creating a unique doll that children anywhere would cherish, but they had no means to get it to the outside world without middlemen stealing all the profit as in the sweatshops. Ann Fukumoto became a volunteer for them, selling their dolls in Japan, with all profits going straight back to the Manila women.
The enterprise has stayed small, but today 200 women work in and own the Fairy-Tale Doll Project, in two buildings which are run like a credit union, with workers able to borrow from the profits and build better homes for themselves. The range of products has grown, with extraordinary hand-stitched Advent calendars, animal trains with tiny figures, Noah's Arks and other cloth books that any child would love.
What has not changed is the absence of middlemen. Previously the dolls were available only in Japan, but recently Ann's non-stamp collecting sister, Margarita Synnott, has become the Irish distributor for these dolls. Initially working from her own home (which thankfully did not have a mud floor) she sells them at craft fairs. They are not available in shops. When it became logistically impossible to work from home, All Hallows College in Drumcondra stepped in with the offer of free space for her voluntary operation. A wide selection of dolls and other handcrafted children's gifts can be viewed at www.allhallows.ie (look for link to fairy doll project) or Margarita can be contacted directly at pfm@allhallows.ie or ph: 01-837 3745 ext 310.
All Hallows is the college to which some commentators apparently want Bertie Ahern barred from making any cosy calls. This seems a pity as it actually houses the headquarters of a whole range of organisations that I thought any taoiseach should be encouraged to phone. These include the Jubilee Debt and Development Coalition (which campaigns for the abolition of Third-World debt), Ruhama (which works for and with women in prostitution), Console (the Bereaved by Suicide Foundation), the Migraine Association of Ireland, the Older Women's Network and Ean (the Emigrants' Advice network).
If you are in Dublin today you will get a chance to see the Doll House products for yourself all day at the Craft Fair in the Irish Financial Services Centre. Otherwise they are on sale all year round through the website. An average hand-stitched doll, cloth book or Noah's Ark bag retails at €35 and a cloth advent calendar at €40, but there are smaller, equally exquisite presents from just a few euro.
It would be nice to think that some Irish children will wake up this Christmas - or on their next birthday - and cuddle toys not made by other children exploited by sweatshops across the world, and that this collective of Manila woman (who refused to let themselves be exploited in such sweatshops) will continue to grow.
None of which might have happened had a girl in Drimnagh not discovered that she had no stamps for the Japanese page in her stamp album.