Capacity-building for rural women artisans in Peru

What's changing in Patacancha? What is the impact you see? How is life different in the households where the women you work with live?

Just the other day, a former volunteer who is now a college senior doing a thesis asked me these questions. We get asked this a lot, and sometimes we have to tell the awkward truth: We don't always know. We aren't in the households. Indigenous communities aren't very open to outsiders, and we don't always see what goes on behind the scenes. We are really busy running an ambitous project on a shoestring budget. We don't always take the time necessary to find out the answers. It's not pretty, but it's true.

Except sometimes, we get some wonderful volunteers to come and help us out! This past week, our volunteers Merel and Jessa ran a three-hour workshop in the community of Huilloc that they spent weeks preparing. This is their account. Spoiler alert: It's fabulous. 

Because we wanted this presentation to be a fun and interactive activity, we designed exercises in which the women had to draw, arrange pictures, or discuss a number of questions amongst themselves in small groups. 
 
During the discussions and exercises they told us that since their involvement with Awamaki, gender roles have been changing in their households. Men, for example, help them with the spinning of wool, and they take care of the children and cook for the family when the women are busy working. When asked if they liked this change, the women started laughing shyly and then all said: yes! Before, women used to help their husbands on the land and were the sole caretakers of their children and responsible for all domestic chores. They explained that because of their own work, and their own income, they are less dependent on their husbands. They also said they liked contributing to their household expenses, and nearly all of them named their children's education as their most important expense for their new income.

The women also said that before working with Awamaki, they did not use natural dyes, only synthetic yarn. They also said that they have learned to make different types of clothing and accessories. Before, their skills were limited to making ponchos and shawls, traditional wear just for themselves. They said that now, they have better and more varied food, more clothes and the ability to build better houses. 

When we talked about the future, the women said they want to grow as leaders. "I want to learn to speak in public with confidence," one woman said. Several women explained that they are afraid to express themselves because sometimes in their community, men laughed at women when they said something in public because they stumbled on their words.

Your donations have made these changes possible. Workshops like the one that Merel and Jessa ran--with all the supplies, transportation, snacks and staff help--are entirely funded by your contributions. We couldn't do this without you. 

We wish we could invite you for a cup of coca tea and a visit to the communities, but we know that most of you live very far away. So we made a short video to bring you on a virtual visit. We hope it inspires you to come for a real visit in the new year!

Links:

• Awamaki Thank You Video

This month, GlobalGiving has invited us to submit #FailForward stories. Since we have enough failure stories to easily fill 12 project reports per year, we thought we’d take the opportunity to share one with you! Here is our major #FailForward from the past year.

Rewind to nearly six years ago. Awamaki was brand new. We were a couple of committed volunteers and ten weavers with the idea to sell weavings in our tourist town so the women could earn an income. We didn’t have much money, but we spent every sol we had to build a weaving center with the women, who called their group the Songuillay cooperative. The center would be a place to hold trainings and meetings, and importantly, it also served as picturesque destination for tourists who paid us a (whopping!) $10/head to take them up to visit the women and learn about weaving. Over the years, Awamaki brought on 90 more artisans in four other communities, but the center remained the face of Awamaki, a retreat-like setting filled with traditionally-dressed artisans, crawling babies, and colorful weavings.

Earlier this year, the husband of one of our artisans came into our office and introduced himself as the president of the Songuillay cooperative. It is an understatement to say this came as a shock. Women’s leadership and economic empowerment are the principles behind every program we run and every decision we make. Thanks to a U.S. State Department grant, we had been running intensive capacity-building in women’s leadership with this cooperative for eight months. How had they elected a man president of the women’s cooperative? Had they just been tuning us out for five years? It was one of those not-so-fun moments that makes you question the point of your existence.

What we learned was worrisome. When we built the center, the husband of one of the weavers donated the land for its construction. We learned that over the years, as the cooperative became more financially successful, he had increasingly attempted to influence the cooperative so that his family members benefitted more than others. He told the women that he was the legal president of the group, and that Awamaki had built the center on his land and thus worked through him. He influenced who received weaving orders and who attended tourists’ visits. The women artisans are mostly illiterate and few have been to school. They don’t know their legal rights and couldn’t read their association's bylaws. In Peru, it is common for institutions to say one thing and do another. They feared that while Awamaki paid lip service to women’s empowerment, we knew and approved of the situation and this husband's control.

While we talked about women’s leadership, the women were being intimidated by a man we had inadvertently empowered. As a rule, we try to stay out of community politics as much as possible. However, this situation threatened the women’s progress and the popular tourism program, right in the middle of high season during which thousands of visitors come to the Sacred Valley.  We had dozens of tours scheduled, a center in contention, and the cooperative dividing into factions.

Through lots of hard work, the situation has improved. We phased out the center, and the women have found a new space. We will be able to bring much of our furniture and equipment with us, so our investment in the old center isn’t lost. We brought a Quechua-speaking lawyer to meet with them and explain their options. It turned out they hadn’t tuned out the skills-building; in fact, the women have been much more assertive in using those skills since we helped them restructure their leadership and made our values clear.

This was a learning moment for us at Awamaki. When we started working with Songuillay, we didn’t realize how important it was that the women fully understand their constitution and bylaws. We also didn’t require that the women take strong leadership in their cooperative business. In fact, it was our new emphasis on these principles with Songuillay that resulted in the airing of some of these issues. We already require more active leadership and responsibility from all our cooperatives. When our knitters approached us about building a center last year, we required that they obtain the land in the legal name of their association. They organized fundraisers, took out a bank loan, and bought a small plot of land to build their center. We are sure that no one will ever convince them it isn’t theirs.

Links:

• Weaving in Patacancha