Samantha Morshed Interview (Part Four)

Samantha Morshed Interview (Part Four)

By Ariana

In this forth and final installment of our interview with Samantha Morshed, founder of Pebble Child and Hathay Bunano, we learn more about what drives her success. 

Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing the empowering Samantha Morshed, the founder of “Pebble Child”, who holds a list of accomplishments that many people would consider extremely difficult to achieve. Although it was only 7 AM in Kuala Lumpar, where she was located during our interview, the time by no means hampered her enthusiasm! Giving us detailed descriptions of the nitty gritty of rural and city life, Samantha proved her passion for changing the artisans’ living conditions. I felt like I was being read a fun history book. A fun history book? No way! But, Samantha definitely deserved the title; we found her enthusiasm and stories so entertaining!

"According to your website, one of the goals of your organization is to provide employment that fits in with rural life and prevents migration to the cities. What benefits do you perceive in rural vs city life?”

To my surprise, Samantha’s explanation was quite simple. “You’re talking about really difficult living conditions here. Dhaka is one of the most dense cities in the world. It’s competing with places like China and India with much better infrastructure.” While living conditions in Dhaka have been steadily improving, diseases like cholera and typhoid are still common because of the water contamination and the poor sanitation. “My own son even had [cholera]”, she emphasized. Although the city life is “good”, it isn’t necessarily “easy”. While the conditions in both prove to be unsatisfactory, Dhaka can be considered to be

Pebble's adorable Monster Rattle.

just a step above the rural areas. “The problem is, though, that in Dacca, the population is so dense that is simply does not have the infrastructure to manage the people it has anymore,” Samantha explains. She envisions an effective, though difficult, solution - “Let’s create economic opportunity in the rural areas”. If the population of Dhaka thins out into the rural areas, overall living conditions would have a higher chance of improving in Dhaka and the rural areas. With less people packed into Dhaka, the government would have more reasonable numbers to work with in executing an efficient city improvement plan. On the other hand, a growing population in the rural area would serve as a motivation to improve conditions in a growing area. 

Because she seemed to have a goal in mind, I asked Samantha to elaborate a little bit more. She added,“Pebble continues to grow, and as it does grow, it is really beginning to demonstrate the value of alternative productive methods.” “Alternative production methods”, I thought to myself. When expanding, she referred back to the 2013 Savar Building Collapse in Bangladesh that killed nearly 1,129 people due to poor factory conditions in Dhaka. As a response to the tragedy, she noted that “we assume that these [Pebble] items need to be made in large factory buildings, but you CAN separate the production process.” From this interview, I discovered that Samantha is passionate about changing the norm from working in factories into more rural areas, which she said that “Pebble is really starting to demonstrate.” To me, her goal appears to be an extremely responsible one, illustrating the extent of her passion of her artisans’ safety and well-being. 

With the main questions aside, I decided to switch gears into Samantha’s personal experiences with Pebble...until our Skype call broke up.

As soon as we reconnected,  I asked Samantha about her favorite memories. The question got everybody laughing, as Samantha quickly blurted, “brand new babies!”. She always loved when new babies were born in the artisan communities. With all that Samantha has experienced and achieved, it’s hard to imagine she could top what we had already learned about her, but “in 2009 I went to Buckingham palace to receive the Members of the Order of the British Empire Award from the Queen, that was pretty special,” she recalled. Whattt, the Queen? ...Pretty special indeed!

As the conversation came to an end, we were all stirred by her poise and knowledge. Samantha, you have served as an inspiration to us all!

Hi all! I’m Ariana. Apart from being a junior in highschool, I am also an intern at Shopping for a Change this summer. I’ve learned so much about the marketing world and I look forward to the rest of the summer with Stacey and the rest of the interns. I love multicultural food, playing different instruments, and pretty much anything and everything Nintendo! I hope you enjoy reading our blog posts, we’ve definitely enjoyed writing them.