“Gyelmo,” she says softly, pointing to herself.

I look blankly at her. “Err… Gyelmo?” I repeat like a parrot. And then, my brain whirling, it suddenly comes to me: “Gyelmo! Oh my… Gyelmo!” I embrace her joyously, tears welling in my eyes.

You see, the Gyelmo that I remembered was a painfully shy village housewife. In the summer of 2015, I was sitting in her little room, on the floor, teaching her how to use a measuring tape. She hardly made eye contact. A year later, Gyelmo was still bashful. It was almost impossible to take a photo of her, as she would cover her face whenever I held up my camera.

Yet standing in front of me in November 2018 is a confident, elegant lady. She is looking at me steadily, with a smile. I can hardly believe it is the same Gyelmo. Her transformation from a village housewife into a businesswoman is so startling that I feel overawed.

In 2014, I was holidaying in Bhutan when I met a poor village housewife who displayed keen talent in making intricate weavings. What I thought was a one-off offer to help her to set up a home business, quickly snowballed into the ANA by Karma we know today. Within four months of the accidental start to my social entrepreneurship, we sold more than 1,000 handmade scarves and enrolled the entire village into this budding venture. By 2015, we were providing training for even more weavers and encouraging them to become designers. So many of them would giggle and hide their faces as I talked to them, probably feeling a little intrigued that a foreigner was sitting in their midst babbling in a strange language! Yet I continued to speak and work with them at their weaving looms — which usually drew lots of laughter as I was hopeless at weaving. Soon, they got a little more comfortable with me, and my crazy ideas about making them “businesswomen”.

A year later in 2016, my weaver sisters were making scarves to a high standard of quality — in fact their handiwork was so good that even fellow Bhutanese found it hard to believe the scarves were handmade in Bhutan. This gave the weavers much confidence, knowing that they were on the right track. By July 2016, a dedicated ANA Trust Fund was established for the weavers’ benefit, with the guidance of the National Bank of Bhutan. This very act gave the women much to think about: they knew that all the profits of the social enterprise would go into their Trust Fund and into their community. With the proceeds, ANA runs training programmes such as business skills and basic computer skills for women and children. The weavers got very serious about running the business well.

To help them further establish themselves, financial literacy training was introduced, including budgeting, foreign currency and stock management. As an accountant, I believe the best way to empower a woman is to give her financial skills. As our lessons got harder, I kept saying to the weavers with great enthusiasm, “Yes, you can do it!” No matter how many times I had to repeat the lessons, I would do it with great patience because I deeply admired them for their determination to learn; and they saw this as their only chance to climb out of poverty, literally using their own bare hands.