Capacity-building for rural women artisans in Peru

We are so excited to be getting back to work with our partner artisans. Thanks to your generous support we have started designing a capsule home collection. The idea behind this collection is to create something that appeals directly to the customers from our online store so that we can open new markets for our partner artisans.

Until COVID, most of our customers were tourists in Peru, and we didn't sell very much online in the U.S. Tourists in Peru, who bought from us and directly from the artisans, always loved naturally-dyed yarn and traditional Andean motifs in our artisan partners' textiles. Each of those textiles were unique and we only sold them in Peru. In the U.S., we have sold items with designs that blended Andean and modern styles. 

We have always gotten a lot of requests for this type of traditional Andean design in our online store, but we have never had the ability to create something traditional that we could produce at scale, which is necessary to sell online. Now, with your support, we are excited to be doing that for the first time and developing a collection of home items with beautiful traditional Andean motifs.

For this mini collection, we working with the artisans to create a very traditional Andean design in a contemporary product shape. We will have a collection of pillows but the star of the pillow show will be a very long lumbar pillow that incorporates traditional embroidery/stitching, as well as traditional designs. We will be using yarn that the artisans spin themselves out of alpaca fleece that we buy directly from our artisans and other area alpaca farmers--which helps us generate more income for our partners and their villages. We are planning to dye the yarn using traditional plant dyes. Our first dye workshop with the artisans is next week.

After the yarn is dyed, we will be working with the artisans to support their leadership with the pillow designs. Typically when we design a product to sell in the U.S., our Mexican-American-Peruvian (at heart) designer takes the lead and works with the artisans to incorporate their designs into a contemporary piece that is more popular in the U.S. With this piece, we will be working with the artisans in workshops to explain design principles and ask them to create samples based on examples and ideas, rather than explicit instructions. We have always worked closely with the artisans in the design process, but for this project we will have a series of trainings and then ask them to come up with the final designs.  

Your support for this project has been crucial. We are so grateful to you, not only for helping us bring a new product to market that will give our artisan partners a new sales channel, but also for trusting us to find a new way to do this. We are doing so many things we have never done before! We are weaving with a rustic, handspun, chunky yarn--usually used for knitting, not weaving--that our partners make. Not only are we weaving with it, but we are also dyeing it, whereas until now we have only used it in its undyed colors of black, brown and white. Our artisans are building new skills and developing new products as we do this. Finally, we are so excited to experiment with this new method of design collaboration. We think this home collection will be stunning and we are excited to bring you along. Thank you!

This project report was written by Melissa Tola, Awamaki's Tourism Coordinator. Melissa has been in the Sacred Valley for the duration of the pandemic, assisting with food deliveries, artisan product sales, communications and many other jobs in the absence of tourism. 

Our partner artisans want to send you a very special thank you through this second year of pandemic we are all living. Every time we go and bring food baskets, they wait for us and share with us a big gratitude for people like you that continue helping them through these rough seasons.

With the beginning of the new year, we were hopeful that things will change a bit. Unfortunately Peruvians are becoming less and less hopeful of things getting better anytime soon. Due to political issues and a huge economical gap between regions, oxygen and ICU beds are hard to find in Cusco.

Ollantaytambo has been hit hard with Covid-19 for the past 3 months. People in town are very afraid. Some of them haven’t left their houses for a year and a half. With very little help from the government our partner artisans are having a hard time dealing with this. Hospitals, doctors or any type of health access is limited in the communities. If they are feeling ill or need medical assistance, it does not exist in their villages. There is a government clinic in town but it only has 1 doctor available and if you are in an emergency you will have to go to Cusco which is 1hr and a half away from Ollantaytambo. Getting a test for Covid-19 is only available Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 11am.

The local government announced new variants of Covid-19 have been found in Cusco a couple weeks ago, many of the women in the partner villages are scared to come down to Ollantaytambo.

Vaccines have already arrived in Peru but cases have risen in the Cusco region and restrictions have been tighter. The government is talking about new variants and double masks and face shields are required to be worn in markets and  public spaces.

With vaccinations coming available in other countries, the borders have become more flexible and this means more people coming into Ollantaytambo. There is a lot of confusion and mistrust in seeing tourists back in Ollantaytambo. While this brings hope and gives them light, our partner artisans are very scared of going back to “normal.” Some of them will venture into the markets and sell their product, but what they earn is not nearly as much as they used to.

Our Awamaki team keeps working hand in hand with partners outside of Peru to give the artisans some extra income, but things are very different from other years.

With your contribution we have been able to share 632 food baskets to 5 different communities, since the beginning of the year. All are full of vegetables and grains that will help the women and their families build a strong immunity system. We are committed to continue to support our partner artisans in these times of insecurity and stress.

Once again thank you for your support and we will continue to keep you updated on our efforts to continue with food baskets.