Team Peru

For the Love of Choquecancha

July 31, 2012

Picking up from where Katie left off in the last blog, we are moving forward with the Social Enterprise project. For me personally, working for the first several weeks from the house in Calca on the supply chain and marketing side of the INKAcase project came to a new level during our first visit to Choquecancha, where we organized a children’s school carnival, started the foundations for the new greenhouse, and met the women weavers for the first time. I was finally able to put faces to the INKAcase project; the women weavers of the Wiñay Warmi Association greeted us warmly and happily discussed their culture and traditions with us. It was reassuring to see and hear that they are empowered by the independence they get through the sales of their textiles. For most of the women, their earnings from textile sales are their only source of income apart from their husbands’ incomes. This money is then spent back on the education and health of their families, in addition to a portion going to a community savings pot, which is put aside in hopes of purchasing sheep for wool or a plot of land to build a small weaving house. Stepping out of the mindset of marketing and getting back to the point of this project – promoting a way for the indigenous women of Choquecancha to empower themselves and alleviate the level of poverty that they live in – makes me all the more excited to move this enterprise project forward and sustain it with the most impact possible. I’ve come to love this small town of Choquecancha and what it means to Team Peru and the Andean Alliance. ~Monica Kelsh

Entry Filed under: Community Health Team. Posted in  Community Health Team Tags: Choquecancha, INKAcase, Team Peru, textiles, traditional textiles, weavers.