Empowering Women Through Design in Rural Peru

For this project report, we want to do something a little different. We want you to meet Martha, our newest staff member. 

We met Martha when we started working with our second knitting group, the Rumira group. Martha was a great knitter and the treasurer of the group. She was really impressive: responsible, smart, and a great knitter. 

So we offered her a job! This year, we added our seventh artisan group, and our production coordinator needed help. We brought Martha on board in May to help create products and manage the groups.

Martha is our first local in-house designer. As a skilled knitter, she creates new products, adjusts patterns, and spends lots and lots of time teaching the knitters how to make beautiful knitwear. She is the final word on quality control, and our business relies on her precise and consistent eye. She works with our international staff to understand trends, marketability and quality standards in the U.S.

Martha is a great knitter, but hadn't had much experience using a computer before--something we do a lot of at the office! After three months of training, though, she was picking it up fast. She now uses excel, word and email regularly. She is also proving herself a natural leader. She manages both of our knitting cooperatives and the spinners, and she is guiding them through our empowerment and business management trainings. 

When we asked Martha what empowerment means to her, she answered that for her, this means the ability to make your own decisions in lfe, instead of being dominated by your husband, and to have a feeling of control over your own life. She says,

"When I first started earning money with Awamaki, I was able to make more decisions about how we spend money in my house. Now, working for Awamaki, I feel more secure, and I can express my ideas and make decisions based on my own feelings...When I look at my fellow knitters from Rumira, I see these changes in their homes also."

Martha says that in Rumira, the women don't talk a lot about these issues. But as a leader and an Awamaki coordinator, she wants to change that. She doesn't feel like she has enough experience yet to give these trainings, but she is excited to be learning alongside other Awamaki staff. 

She got a chance to practice the other day at our first "Fair Trade and Empowerment Workshop." Martha went along to observe, but of course ended up translating, clarifying, and helping where she could. We are so lucky to have Martha as part of our team and a great example to rural women in the Sacred Valley!

P.S. We are so grateful to you, our supporters, for helping us offer economic opportunities to rural women like Marta and her knitting neighbors. We wish we could invite you for a cup of coca tea and host you for a visit, but we know that many of you live very far away. So, we made a video to invite you for a virtual visit and tell you how grateful we are for your support!

Links:

• Empowerment workshop on GlobalGiving
• Video Visit to Awamaki!

Hello dear supporters! We have some exciting news to share, and just in time for Bonus Day today! Our new collection for 2015 includes leather features to complement the handwoven textiles in our bags and totes. Our seamstresses are learning new skills and making higher value items that can fetch higher prices.

But there is one little detail. The machines that you all so generously helped us purchase a few years ago just aren't equipped to sew leather. The material is hard on the machines, and the seamstresses struggle to create strong, straight seams that look professional. As Justa explains, 

"The leather is thick and makes the needle jump. Sometimes, we have to force it through, and it does damage on the underside of the faric. That is why our work isn't as pretty when we are sewing leather on the machine."

With our current machines, our leather goods still look a little homemade. While that is of course very charming, it limits the clients for the bags to smaller stores and individual purchases. We think our artisans' bags are so beautiful that they belong in bigger stores all over the U.S., but we can't get there without a leather sewing machine.

Today, we are trying to raise $1500 for a leather machine, and we would love your help! Please donate so that we can purchase this essential equipment for the seamstresses. Expanding our collection to leather will allow them to learn new skills while supporting more weavers and generating increased income for these artisan women so that they can lead their communities out of poverty.  

Links:

• Awamaki site
• Awamaki Store