In week five, we began wrapping up our stay at the farm, completing the most important tasks that needed to be done at the end of this year. These included a reinforcement of the main gate, the construction of a second stone wall to replace rotting wooden poles, and plenty of weeding and sowing.
Throughout the week, the slightly melancholic sentiment of an approaching goodbye lingered. For although we looked forward to meeting different potential partners after our departure, we had grown very close with our hostess Nelly, and none of us were looking forward to parting ways.
On our last day, we surprised Nelly and Juliana by putting some goodies in their shoes, a tradition we learned at home that conveniently coincided with our departure on December 6th, Saint Nicholas Day. After driving us down into town, Nelly kindly returned the favour during an emotional goodbye, gifting us some of the best chocolate we ever tried produced by Leyenda, a local, small-scale chocolate brand in the high-end range. Perfect for eating away our sorrow!
After all was said and done, we headed over to Matilde "Matico" Lema's colourful weavers' house, for our second meeting with her and to meet her daugther Paula, who would attend this time to elaborate especially on the more managerial aspects of their Huarmi Maqui undertaking. (For details on Huarmi Maqui, see week 3.) After elaborating our respective views, priorities and proposals, we are excited to announce that this Friday, December 6 2019, saw Socialpaca's first agreement to tentative cooperation.
The scale is small: we agreed to the production of 10 different scarves, in order to test out various designs from which to select those to be reproduced for sale in Europe. But for us, this is an important step, as it marks the very first items made in the name of the Socialpaca project. And they will without doubt be among the most ethically valuable textiles to have been produced so far.
These first scarves will
- support a traditional, local minority economy in Ecuador,
- improve the pay of artisans, and
- help create an access point to the European market for a local business in Ecuador.
All this is enabled by the simple but effective restructuring of costs, allocating more money towards those crafting the product, and less towards excessive marketing and fat bonuses. As our project grows, we believe that this will help drive a larger movement towards global fair pay.
After meeting with Paula and Matico, we continued on to Quito, where we would have a long anticipated meeting with Karla of Kun Eco Fibras, with whom we had first contact in week 2. Kindly, William's family provided us with a place to stay, and we spent the weekend with the pair getting to know each other. William’s family kindly offered us free accommodation, and we enjoyed an exceptionally good time. We look forward to report on how things evolve further in Update No. 6.
