Mrs. Carter Melik
Founder and Director of the Yunnan Mountain Heritage Foundation

Mrs. Carter Malik is the founder and Director of Yunnan Mountain Heritage Foundation in China.The Yunnan Mountain Heritage Foundation (YMHF) is a non-profit making organization founded to protect and promote cultural heritage, handicrafts, and eco-tourism in Shangri-La, Yunnan.YMHF projects include poverty alleviation, sustainable livelihood and job creation in local rural communities.Mrs. Malik was awarded the title "Honorary Citizen of Shangri-La" in September2007 at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

Mrs. Malik's work includes several conferences on the preservation of cultural assets of Shangri-la: Friends of Shangri-La 1 (2005) and Friends of Shangri-La 2 (2007), and the first National Parks Workshop(2006). Mrs. Malik opened the Shangri-la Handicraft Center in 2006. Based in an old Tibetan town house, the Center houses a handicraft shop, a community library, volunteer residence, and meeting rooms.The Handicraft Shop is a showcase for local indigenous crafts.Thank You Small Library opened in 2008 and is a busy learning center.Volunteer teachers give lessons daily in Mandarin and English to students of all ages. Old Town people are welcome to become members and check out library books.The center has co-sponsored a Bee Keeping project with Shangri-la Farms for rural farmers.This ground breaking project has provided training to more than 150 farmers and has become a showcase project for sustainable beekeeping in the area.

Mrs. Malik lives in New York with her husband, Khalid Malik, Director of the United Nations Human Development Report Office. She travels to Shangri-la several times a year to oversee the project at the YMHF Handicraft Center in the old town.Her background is sustainable tourism and handicraft development: design and marketing.

Mrs. Malik has written several published articles on crafts including her contribution to Berg Encyclopedia of World Textiles on Uzbekistan's famed textiles; History of Asian Embroidery: Uzbekistan's Sousanis.She has worked in Nepal, Uzbekistan, United States and China on handicraft development projects.