Centro COMParte: social economy & peace in Bogota

In COMParte we continue to promote women's empowerment and gender equity through the Olingo project, which the aim is to generate decent incomes for women seamstresses in the city of Santa-Rosa, by bringing them in a collaborative work. In this sense, we continue to work on the development of the Olingo brand, to strengthen the values of community work and the exchange of knowledge between women seamstresses. A lot of work has been done to standardize our production : creation of plans, sewing pattern, technical specifications and manufacturing instructions. In this way, we are able to both facilitate the work of women and improve the quality of our products. This allows us to be more competitive in the market. Then, we have built a marketing strategy, identifying several potential points of sale for our products in Bogota.

Finally, in May Olingo launched a new collection in which 80 products have been produced, thanks to the work of 2 women: Ruby and Leila. They are two mothers who are heads of household : they are involved into to the project both in terms of clothing confection and design. For this production, approximately 370,000 pesos will be destined to the payment of these two women for the confection of these products.

 In this latest collection we have collaborated with 3 urban artists: DJLU, Garavato and RP2 Mestizo, who help us promote the Olingo values through their designs that we use for the prints of our bags. We produced 50 bags and 30 "Totebag".As in every collection, we have privileged the use of responsible materials such as recycled materials, or ecological ink (water-based) for the prints

 We expect to sell this collection in art and design stores in Bogota and participate in entrepreneurship events to promote the brand. With the sale of these products we will be able to continue investing in the development of the brand so that in the near future we will get involved more women to the project and ensure a stable income.

In Colombia 11,6% of women are unemployed, which represents almost twice the masculine unemployed (6,6%) rate. Active women earn on average 28% less than men (DANE and PNUD 2015).

One of the goals of our projects is to create forms of labor inclusion and to promote wage equity, supporting women in social or economic vulnerability conditions to undertake projects that help them to be economically independent.

During the last months of 2018, we have been working with women from the project OLINGO and women from the project “heritage is in the pot”

With OLINGO (Textile accessories project) we have been launching a new design of ecological bags onto the market, this new version has an exterior pocket with zipper, useful to save your keys, your money or your phone. Also we are creating a new design of bags with strips, now with impermeable material inside.

Here we are sharing with you some pictures of our new campaign.

Follow us on Instagram: Olingo, marca social

Since our Project “El Patrimonio está en la Olla” we organized 2 events based on Colombian food. The first one was in the cultural house “Casa B”, to promote the heritage of Colombia: deserts made by women and dance.

For the second event we organized a lunch with Colombian gastronomy, in which 8 women met to share their traditional knowledge and recipes, providing to the participants the best flavors of the Caribe, the Pacific, Huila and Tolima.

The objective of this gastronomy event was to support women to start a productive project based on their traditional knowledge. The event has been very successful: here we share some of pictures that have been taken this wonderful day.