By Emma Hague | Project Director
Through the Global Open Challenge, Awamaki has now raised enough money to fully fund our trip to the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market in New Mexico this July. Given that a few factors regarding Awamaki's participation in the event have recently changed we would like to take the opportunity to provide all our donors with a project update:
In early June our two weavers and their translator were refused U.S. visas for the second time, due to the U.S. embassy in Lima issuing a blanket ban on all visa applications solicited by Peruvians in order to attend the Folk Art Market. Awamaki will still be participating in the event - project Directors Emma Hague and Kennedy Leavens will attend the artist training program and capacity-building workshops on behalf of the weavers, and will also be staffing the Awamaki booth for the three days of the Market.
However we still anticipate that we will have funds left over having paid for all of our Santa Fe related expenses and would therefore like to provide you with information about what these funds will be now used for.
In the past year Awamaki has succeeded in generating a market (both local and international) for traditional woven textiles that is now large enough and secure enough to support more weavers than those we already work with in the community of Patacancha. This month we are excited to be conducting our first exploratory meeting with a group of weavers from the community of Kelkanca, a remote, isolated Quechua community situated at over 13,000ft in the high puna landscape of the Patacancha valley.
Given the remoteness of the community and the poor condition of the access road, we are finding it near impossible to acquire transportation; few vehicles exist locally that are 1)able to traverse the two and half hours of rough road to Kelkanca and 2) available to hire.
Awamaki is therefore currently facing a barrier to our project expansion plans, one which we can only realistically overcome by acquiring our own means of transport. Awamaki is proposing to use all funds left over from our Santa Fe fundraising drive to invest in the purchase of a 4x4 truck. This will allow us to regularly visit Kelkanca and other, even more isolated communities that have requested our support in order that we may build the relationships needed to implement our model for economic sustainability.
Please see our GlobalGiving project page for more information about this project:
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/market-access-for-isolated-andean-communities/
Thank you for your support.
The AwaTeam.
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