Gender Equality Peru Project #10415

Capacity-building for rural women artisans in Peru

by Awamaki

Capacity-building for rural women artisans in Peru

Project Report | Feb 4, 2013
Training Dyes Experts

By Kennedy Leavens | Executive Director

Bringing firewood

Awamaki works with nearly 60 indigenous weavers. For several years we have regularly run natural dyes workshops with them so they can retain traditional techniques and increase the market value of their weavings. A local weaving expert leads the workshops, which are funded in part by donations to this GlobalGiving project.

Since we began holding the workshops, the weavers' dyeing expertise has increased, but as our project grows, we have increasingly specific dyeing needs. For example, in order to accept many international orders, the cooperative must be able to guarantee certain color shades or combinations. Plant, fungus and insect dyes are an important part of the weavers' tradition, but by nature they are imprecise in their fidelity to exact color shades. Dyeing expertise is an increasingly necessary skill in order to link weavers to international markets.

Responding to the increasing demands of these markets, in November Awamaki held extra, more intensive natural dyes training for six weavers who had volunteered to become dyes experts. In the future they can take charge of leading dye workshops for the whole cooperative, rather than relying on an outside teacher to lead them.

The weavers' new expertise will also allow the cooperative to offer dyes workshops to tourists through Awamaki's tourism offerings. Tourists will be able to stay in the community in the home of one of the weavers, and learn to spin, dye and weave.

This is an exciting step towards greater cooperative autonomy, and will translate directly into increased income for the women. Moreover, running workshops internally will save Awamaki funds to invest in other skills that will allow our female artisans to continue creating unique, fashionable goods for international markets.

Learning about dye plants

Natural dyes color swatches

Magdalena and son

Purple from cochineal

Watching the action

Links:

Awamaki site

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Nov 1, 2012
Greenhouses, natural dyes and Excel spreadsheets!

By Kennedy Leavens | Executive Director

Jesusa, who took classes in teaching weaving

It has been a busy and productive three months at Awamaki, and we are wrapping up a year of great progress with our women's cooperatives in continued skills-building

Your support of capacity-building at Awamaki funds three types of trainings:

technical trainings that enable our women to improve the quality and marketability of their products, this directly increasing their income
management skills training that support our women in taking increasing ownership of the daily business of the cooperative, such as Excel training so they can manage orders and attendance
life skills trainings that support general well-being for them and their families. These topics come from needs identified by the women. We run them because while we believe that while income in the hands of women is the most effective way to lift families and communities out of poverty, we recognize that health, education and leadership play a crucial role.

Please read on about the workshops in which our women have participated!

Our knitters have recently completed two workshops on quality finishing techniques, and they are currently applying this new knowledge to their first large export order! They are currently completing 40 pairs of complicated slippers and 50 baby hats, as well as continuing to stock our store in Peru. In the upcoming months, they will be learning new men's and children's accessories, and beginning another round of training to knit complicated items such as sweaters and cardigans. With intensive support from our staff and an external trainer, they are starting to take on more managerial responsibilities, such as managing attendance and banking for their common fund.

The knitting cooperative members have also attended workshops on green technology and design, product differentiation and innovation.

This year, our seamstresses learned how to make 12 new patterns, half of which are extremely complicated. They have also started computer and English classes taught by our wonderful volunteers, and with the help of these new skills they have begun managing and placing their own inventory orders. Most exciting and fun, they have done a few design workshops and even come up with one design of their own for a baby backpack. Currently they are sewing ponchos, bags, wallets, purses and skirts for the holiday season in the United States. (For an amazing gift idea, check out their products online!). In the upcoming months the seamstresses will be focusing heavily on the 12 designs they learned, continuing to practice placing orders and creating production schedules, and moving into more design work of their own.

The sewing and knitting cooperatives have made so much progress in product development, they were recently featured in Vogue India! See the attached PDF for a look.

In the indigenous communities, our weavers have improved their variety of dye colors and ability to weave to measurement this year. We hope to carry out one more dye workshop in November. This workshop will be a bit different from past workshops: rather than dyeing with the whole cooperative, the weavers have nominated several women to undergo an intensive training so that they can lead future dye workshops with both the cooperative and tourists, thus increasing cooperative autonomy and income, while freeing up Awamaki funds to invest in other skills.

This year, our sustainable tourism program developed an intensive four-day weaving workshop that sends tourists to live with our weavers and learn to spin raw wool and weave on the backstrap loom. Both the homestay and the lessons for these tourists represent a significant source of income for the weavers. Six of our weavers volunteered for an intensive three-day training in how to teach weaving. We hope that by improving the quality of the lessons, we can offer the program widely and increase the number of tourists who go. Typical of the members of this cooperative,four of the weavers who attended did not complete primary school; two others went to high school, but neither graduated. All have young children. These new skills will represent enormous opportunity for them. Our next trainings will be on hospitality and cooking to ensure that they can provide a quality, comfortable experience for tourists.

Thirteen of our weavers have also undergone four workshops on greenhouse maintenance and agriculture. We have built eight greenhouses in the past two years and will be builidng five more this year. Weavers grow natural dye plants for their weaving that they would otherwise have to buy, and vegetable for their families. The greenhouses allow for increased economic independence and food security.

Our spinners are currently learning to spin chunky alpaca yarn for sale. Accustomed to spinning very tight, thin yarn for weaving, they are struggling to create thick yarn with structural integrity and consistent thickness. The yarn they currently produce sells well in the store in Peru, but is unfit for export. Moreover, we have found that lots of alpaca fiber is wasted in the spinning process. We hope to teach our spinners to create felt from this fiber so our seamstresses can use it to make home furnishings accessories. So far this year, we haven't had the ability to invest in workshops in spinning and felting, but we hope that we will have the funds to conduct these by the end of the year. We have also applied for a grant in support of this project. Wish us luck!

Finally, we are working with our partner health organization to offer reproductive health classes to our cooperatives, starting with our Spanish teachers in Ollantaytambo. We think this says it all.

Thank you so much for your support and we look forward to keeping you updated in the future! Please don't hesitate to contact us for any reason at info@awamaki.org!

Learning the cowl neck scarf

Knitter with yarn fresh from the spinning coop

Links:

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Jul 27, 2012
High season, high spirits!

By Kennedy Leavens | Executive Director

teaching weaving

Thanks to you, our amazing donors, we have been able to raise nearly $2000 for capacity-building workshops for our women artisan cooperatives in rural Peru. We are hard at work putting these donations to good use!

Our knitters have been busily engaged in skills workshops in reading patterns, making sweaters and quality finishing techniques. Our seamstresses have made great strides in their sewing abilities, and are now making skirts and pillowcases almost twice as quickly as before - which means more income (and less frustration!) now that they are a year into their training. Their hard work is paying off!

In June, we gave our first tourism workshop with our rural Quechua weavers. We put into motion a new plan to offer Weaving Immersion Workshops to tourists through our weaving cooperative in the tiny community of Patacancha. This allows our weavers to earn additional income from hosting tourists in their homes and teaching them the traditional art of weaving on the back strap loom. As part of this project, a group of six weavers with an interest in teaching and providing homestays to tourists were selected from the cooperative of 44. The 6 women, Felicitas, Jesusa, Margarita, Cecilia, Yolanda and Doris then participated in four workshops led by Awamaki's Weaving Project Coordinator, Mercedes Durant focusing on communication, organization, hospitality, and teaching. Former volunteer and Columbia professor Anna Craycroft, who worked with Awamaki in April to develop the teaching curriculum accompanied by a workbook to walk students through weaving basics in English.

In July, we sent up our first group of student guinea-pigs (not the edible kind, the testing kind!) to test out the program with great results from both the weavers and students. The weavers are excited to participate because it means a higher and more stable income for something that they already know and enjoy doing, and the chance to impart this traditional knowledge to people from other cultures. Students enjoy get an in-depth look at the weaving process and the ability to weave basic designs on their own.

The 4-day Weaving Immersion Workshop costs $275 is run by Awamaki and includes transport to and from Patacancha, a three-day homestay with all meals included, twelve hours of weaving lessons, and a gift basket of fresh fruits and veggies for the homestay family. This touristic offering will be an important source of income for our women weavers in Patacancha and their families.

Workshops for the next few months will include more skills development work, trainings for our new spinning cooperative, and a new business skills development curriculum for the women of all our cooperatives to begin to teach them the skills they need to take greater leadership over the project.

Yolanda

Margarita

Jesusa

Felicitas

traditional andean backstrap loom

Links:

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