Silk handicrafts sold at Grand Junction Farmers' Market benefit Cambodians

GRAND JUNCTION — Each Thursday at the Grand Junction Farmers’ Market, Douglas Mendel sells silk purses, scarves and tablecloths, as well as other handicrafts from Cambodia. The proceeds fund his Cambodian Relief nonprofit organization.

Mendel, 43, travels to Cambodia twice a year, bringing supplies and equipment to fire stations, national parks and to an organization that helps disadvantaged children.
Mendel first visited Cambodia 11 years ago, during a six-week trip through Asia. He was in Cambodia for the last three days of his journey.

“I fell in love with the food, the culture, people, handicrafts,” Mendel said.

During his third trip to Cambodia, which borders Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, Mandrel visited a fire station in the town of Sihanoukville.

At the time, Mendel lived in Summit County, where he was a volunteer firefighter.

“Fire stations in Cambodia don’t have the money to outfit their departments,” Mendel said. “It’s been my passion to help them.”

Fourteen million people live in Cambodia, where the average person earns about $2 a day, Mendel said. Most people are subsistence farmers.

Approximately 1.7 million Cambodians were killed by starvation, execution and disease during the Khmer Rough regime, from 1975-1979.

“For the past 10 years it’s been safe to visit, and they are on a continual path to rebuilding,” Mendel said.

After returning to his home in Breckenridge, Mendel asked his fire chief there if they could help the firefighters abroad.

“He was able to give me three boxes of station wear clothing — T-shirts, pants and boots,” Mendel said. On his next trip to Cambodia, in 2003, Mendel brought the equipment to the Cambodian firefighters.

Since then, Mandrel has delivered more than three tons of bunker gear, helmets, boots, gloves, nozzles, hose, suspenders, clothing and other items in 11 trips in five years.

Mendel was even able to encourage the Red, White and Blue Fire District in Breckenridge to donate a fire truck in 2005. Mendel raised the necessary $18,000 to ship it there in 2006. Another fire truck was built in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2007.

Mendel extended his Cambodian relief efforts to providing supplies for two national parks, where he delivers digital cameras, GPS units, cameras for taking pictures of wildlife and clothing for the park rangers.

The cameras enable the rangers to photograph the effects of illegal poaching and logging, which Mendel said is a major problem in Cambodia.

He also collects donations for Mlop Tapang, an organization that helps disadvantaged children with schooling, counseling and health care. Mendel brings clothing, stuffed animals, dental supplies, vitamins and supplements, latex gloves and mannequins for CPR training for the center staff.

Although Mendel now lives in Montrose, fundraisers are still held twice a year at the FoodHedz Restaurant in Summit County, where owners Patty and David Welch donate the entire night’s proceeds to the relief organization that Mendel formed in October 2005. The restaurant’s next fundraiser, the sixth in three years, will be held Sept. 19.

Selling Cambodian handicrafts at the Farmers’ Market and other venues also help fund the nonprofit.

Sixteen-year-old Michael Bou, a student in Palisade High School’s International Baccalaureate program, visited relatives in Cambodia for three weeks earlier this summer. Bou is half Cambodian.

Bou met Mandrel at the Farmers’ Market shortly after his return in June. Bou offered to volunteer at the booth selling Cambodian handicrafts. He works the booth each Thursday with his friend Brittany Osborne.

“It’s a great foundation. It helps a lot of people,” Bou said.

Bou said he liked Cambodia a lot, especially the Buddhist temples, although it was
hard to witness the poverty there.

“The hardest part was to come back and see people — everything they have and how they don’t appreciate it,” Bou said.

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.