Capacity-building for rural women artisans in Peru

Hello all, 

It feels so good to be busy again! These days, we have projects humming in tourism, handmade product sales, and food relief, and we are starting to accept volunteers again!

For the past few months we have been busy working with our partner tourism cooperative in Patacancha, called Awac Phuna. Awac Phuna was slated to begin tourism trainings and weaving center construction in early 2020. Funding for those workshops was diverted to food relief. Now, two years later, we are working with them to pick up where we left off.  

As tourism begins to come back, we have re-started tourism training with Awac Phuna so they are better equipped to welcome tourists to their community. Our tourism trainings always include sessions on market understanding–for example, why do tourists visit the community and what are they interested in learning about? Why does a tourist choose to stay in a homestay instead of a hotel? Many of our artisan partners initially think they need to replicate a hotel and restaurant experience in their homes, and market understanding training aims to show them the perspective of a tourist who has chosen a community visit and homestay. We also cover how to prepare their home and cook for tourists, for example, making sure water is fully boiled. Artisans also practice demonstrating different aspects of the weaving process and teaching tourists to weave a bracelet.

Alongside these workshops, we are working with Awac Phuna to create a small space where they can meet, weave and host visitors, so they have a space to grow their business. 

In other exciting news, we are about to launch our first new products since the pandemic! We have been working hard with the artisans from the Awac Phuna and Kelkanca cooperatives to create throw blankets. This is our most-requested product and has been a dream of ours for years. These throw blankets, and their accompanying pillows, have an incredible story. They start with alpaca shearing in the Patacancha Valley, from alpacas that our artisan partners herd. We buy that fiber and hand it off to our group of expert spinners, who spin a chunky, unique alpaca yarn. We’ve been using this in our handknit accessories for years, but we’ve never dyed it (or any alpaca yarn!) before. We then dye the yarn with natural dyes, using cochineal beetle, quico flowers, tara seed pods, and local molle tree peppercorns to make the reds, pinks, golds, purple and gray of the new items. After we dye the yarn, we worked with our artisan partners to develop samples, swapping design inspiration and creating several iterations of each product. We chose final designs together and now the new throws and pillowcases are in production and being photographed, ready for launch later this month. Due to the complexity of the production process, we are creating only a limited number of these to start out. Stay tuned on our Instagram and Facebook for the launch! 

Finally, we continue to make our monthly food deliveries, which will carry on through the end of the year. The recovery in Peru, especially to the tourism industry, has been slow and bumpy. Rising food and gas prices there have put an additional squeeze on families. We will continue to run our food relief program until we are all back on our feet. We are grateful to you and to many generous donors for making this possible.

Thank you everyone who has made our survival and recovery possible with your generosity. 

Hello friends!

In 2021, your generosity has supported both our ongoing emergency food relief program, and our work to help the artisans adapt their businesses to the new market realities. 

In our food relief program, we have distributed 1,956 monthly food baskets to 163 artisans and their families, providing a steady source of food through all the economic uncertainty of the past two years. 

Our design and production team has also been working with our artisan partners to create more products that are adapted to the online pandemic market, including our first ever throw blanket! As with any new product, our team has done many trainings and the artisans are making many samples. This throw also uses a thick handspun alpaca yarn, which our partners have not woven with before. It has been a long time since we have been able to experiment with new techniques and processes, and we have had some great learning come out of it. 

For example, one innovation that has come out of this process is that for the first time, we have been able to turn to our cooperatives to source alpaca fleece from their own animals. Previously we bought fleece from other regions. The village of Kelkanca, our most remote partner village, has always raised alpaca. but never with enough fleece or enough quality fleece for us to be able to buy from them. Due to recent improvements they have made, we are now able to buy fleece from our artisan partners there, and keep those funds in the village. We then take that fleece to our partner cooperatives in Huilloc to spin into a chunky yarn. The yarn goes to our partner knitting cooperatives back in Ollantaytambo, or in the case of the new collection, we take that yarn to the Awac Phuna cooperative or back to Kelkanca, where we dye it and the artisans weave it into the blanket. 

The process hasn't been without challenges, but thanks to your support we are able to take the time and materials we need to teach, experiment and collaborate with the artisans. We are so excited to share our work with you in the new year!

Meanwhile in tourism, bookings are starting to trickle back in. Our resilient artisan partners have spent the past two years supporting their kids who were home from school, farming to feed their families, shearing sheep and alpaca, and weaving. They have been waiting to get back to work. As tourism slowly returns, we aim to spend the next year working with the Awac Phuna cooperative of 25 women to equip them to host returning tourists in a sustainable, respectful, covid-conscious way. 

We hope you will join us! Donations this season will support training, equipment and startup costs for their business. We believe in our artisan partners and their ability to lead the way out of the extended crisis that Peru has seen for the pandemic. Let's end the year with hope, and invest together in the women who will ensure a brighter future for their families and villages.