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Ghaniya Ali Hussain makes beautiful puppets dressed in traditional Bahraini clothes. She won BD3,000 and a trophy for making a model of an old classroom where a religious scholar teaches his students, boys and girls, how to read the Holy Quran.
The teacher and the boys are all dressed in thobes and the girls are wearing bokhnag (long head covers with golden or silver embroidery) on top of their jalabiyas.
Ghaniya, who lives in Bani Jamrah, was very excited about winning the Best Family Product award.
She also makes small puppets as pencil covers, bags and key chains and joined the Productive Families scheme around 1990.
"I used to buy dolls and dress them up with ready-made traditional clothes and then sell them to my relatives and friends," Ghaniya said. "When the Capital Centre opened I started selling my products there too. One of the members taught me how to sew the traditional outfits myself and make the dolls and I learned very quickly.
"The dolls are stuffed with cotton, I make the hair myself and then dress them up in nice clothes with colourful fabrics for the girls and white thobes for the boys."
Ghaniya said her work attracts huge interest from tourists and expats.
"I think foreigners appreciate our traditional crafts more than the locals who mostly complain about the prices not realising that everything we sell is hand made," she said.
"The embroidery in the clothes takes time but I enjoy dressing up my dolls and making them look attractive."
Ghaniya is also thankful to her mother. "My mother has always been the source of support to me. She pushes me forward and makes me feel that I am doing something special," she said. "So she is sharing this award with me too!"
