How IYONG is Rebuilding Displaced Communities of Manipur with Threads of Dignity

With Lakshmipriya Devi’s acceptance speech at the BAFTA stage after winning the first BAFTA Award ever for India, for her Manipuri language film Boong, the reminder for peace and harmony in the state is here at our doors and news again. Nearly three years into Manipur's ethnic conflict, over 258 lives lost, 60,000 people displaced, the world's attention has moved on. Yet the humanitarian crisis deepens, and nowhere is this erasure more visible than in the collapse of livelihoods. When relief camps provide basic rations but no pathway forward, recovery becomes survival without dignity. 

In a former computer coaching classroom in Moirang Lamkhai, something extraordinary is taking root as a response to this void. What began as a borrowed space in the founder, Kumam Davidson's parents' building has become a lifeline for some of Manipur's most vulnerable communities. This is where IYONG, Matai Society's livelihood programme, is quietly revolutionising what it means to rebuild after conflict.

IYONG, meaning livelihood, is a handloom-based social enterprise that trains displaced women and marginalised artisans to weave bags, bamboo ottomans, and water reed mats from relief camps in Bishnupur district. But it's not just skills training. It's cultural preservation meeting trauma recovery, economic restoration intertwined with mental health support, all happening on looms where people who've lost everything are being asked to create something beautiful.

The story begins with a simple, profound need. "Seeking a safe, inclusive space for queer and trans identities in Moirang, we joined forces with like-minded individuals to create a community space," Kumam recounts. But this wasn't just about creating another NGO. The initiative was born from as Kumam says "the necessity to challenge prevailing heteronormative, patriarchal structures and to provide a space for marginalized gender identities in the locality." In a region where over 60,000 people have been displaced by ethnic violence, where internet blackouts are routine and safety is never guaranteed, Matai Society chose to centre those pushed furthest to the margins, women, queer and trans individuals, internally displaced persons.

When Tradition Meets Trauma

There's something almost sacred about handloom weaving in Manipur. For generations, Meitei women have worked their looms, creating textiles that carry cultural memory in every thread. The practice is not merely economic, it is spiritual, woven into the very fabric of identity. Yet today, those looms are falling silent. Powerlooms undercut prices. Supply chains collapse under the weight of conflict. Self-Help Groups that once sustained weavers have disintegrated.

IYONG emerged to catch what was falling through the cracks. In relief camps across Bishnupur district, displaced women are being trained to weave school bags, tote bags, bamboo ottomans, and water reed mats. These handwoven products find their way to buyers through a patchwork of channels, direct sales, partnerships with civil society organisations, and occasional exhibition opportunities, a distribution network as resilient and improvised as the communities creating them.

But here is what makes this different: the work recognises that these artisans need more than income. By engaging women in IDP camps, IYONG provides, as Kumam said when talking to us, "not just immediate income but also economic self-reliance, purpose, and a therapeutic creative outlet amid displacement." Every bag stitched is an act of resistance against erasure, against powerlessness, against the trauma that seeks to unmake people.

The Queer Difference: Leadership as Lived Experience

What happens when those who've experienced marginalisation design the response to it? Matai Society offers a masterclass. "Being women, queer, and trans-led is fundamental," Kumam explains. "It ensures that program design starts from a place of innate understanding of layered discrimination."

This isn't abstract diversity rhetoric. It's methodology. When your team includes people who've navigated compounded discrimination, who understand what it means to be unsafe in your own skin, in your own community, you design differently. You don't replicate hierarchies. You don't leave people behind. IYONG deliberately ensures as Kumam reiterated "that the most marginalized and impacted by conflict, those facing compounded 'structural and local barriers' and a severe 'mental health crisis', are not left behind in recovery efforts."

The work refuses to be siloed. Mental health support intertwines with livelihood training. Economic programmes acknowledge safety concerns. Because the team understands viscerally that you cannot address trauma without addressing survival, and you cannot rebuild livelihoods without rebuilding dignity.

Despite operating under constant internet shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, and the threat of renewed violence, Matai Society has built something that lasts. Through partnerships with organisations like the Mariwala Health Initiative and a network of committed allies, the reach has been transformative: over 3,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have received support, more than 1,000 children have accessed trauma response services, and over 200 LGBTQ persons have found community, safety, and economic pathways. Each number represents a life touched, a future made possible.

The Weight of Hope

Make no mistake, this work is brutal. "Team members, many of whom are from affected communities themselves, operate under constant stress, trauma exposure, and immense pressure,” Kumam responds. Raw materials can't reach artisans when violence flares. Internet shutdowns sever communication lines. Curfews make emergency support nearly impossible. Funding is perpetually scarce.

Yet IYONG persists, driven by something deeper than programming or targets. Its work, as Matai Society frames it, "is not just about survival but about restoring dignity, agency, and a sense of future." In every thread pulled through a loom, there's defiance. In every bag completed, there's proof that community can be rebuilt, that traditional knowledge can become contemporary livelihood, that those society tries to render invisible can weave themselves back into existence.

From that small classroom in Moirang, a movement is growing, one that understands that true resilience looks like queer-led spaces, like displaced women reclaiming purpose, like heritage crafts becoming pathways to healing. One bag, one thread, one dignified livelihood at a time.