Y’abal seems like a place where magic is made – yarns turned into beautiful fabrics with vivid colors and fabrics turned into scarves, bags, smaller bags, bigger bags, more bags and oh, not to mention DRAGONS. More important – the shop is only the peak of an iceberg. But this iceberg is not one of those where the ones sitting on top get all the profits and everybody else just has to work (and it’s also of course not the type of an iceberg that will sink a ship or two on its way).

Melissa and one of the tailors visit the communities of Pacutama and Chuicutama every week to meet the women and teach them to sew the products that Y’abal sells, so that one day there could be even fewer steps between the shop and the ones who provide for it.

Our first visit took place on our first week of work here. Every time we have been there has given us more knowledge about the life of these people and the role that Y’abal plays for them, even though we don’t speak very good Spanish jet and many of these women speak only Kitche. I have been there a few times for now, but I describe the very first meeting.

We start our visit early in the morning, but here it means the sun is already shining. After turning away from the highway we meet a dusty, mountain road that makes us and the car jump and rock and crossing our fingers that we all get there safe. That fact does not stop us from admiring the breath-taking views on even more mountains – a common sight in Guatemala. And then we’re there. It seems like a village in the middle of nowhere (but it still is much more connected to the world than the place where they used to live). You see their small houses made of white bricks and not much else, smoke raising from places where somebody is cooking and uncountable numbers of chicken walking around. This is a simple life and you can’t talk much about luxury when they don’t even have water that is suitable for drinking. That is a problem all over the country of course and even if the get it(hopefully soon), they probably won’t drink it much, but still prefer coffee, tea and cheap soft drinks. An issue that takes us to problems of health care, nutrition, education and eventually back to poor economical situation. Y’abal has not only been working with textiles here, but has also helped with rebuilding their lives after moving here.

Walking around in the village you can feel the cold wind and an urge to put on an other jacket even though the Sun is shining(and i’m from a country with quite extreme 4 seasons). Local women are mostly wearing just their skirts, colorful blouses and a little jacket on top of it. It makes me wonder that those traditional clothes must be very warm (and their wearers used to this weather). We go to the house of one woman who has been participating since the start of Y’abal handicrafts and choose some colorful threads for a new fabric, that Melissa wants to make on her own.

Most of the women we meet go to the sewing class, which takes place in one of those little white houses. It has no other floor than the ground beneath our feet, it’s windows are tiny and lighting is not something impressive, but it has sewing machines and everybody who is interested in mastering(little by little) some new skills start to work on their projects under the guidance of our tailor.

We go outside with two women, Santa and ¨Polina who help us start with a new fabric. For putting the threads up we use traditional tool urdidor. It takes a little practice, but after a while we all consider this a quite meditative work. Of course this is just a start and from here to the actual fabric is still a long way to go, but we can see the colors forming stripes that seem specially bright in warm sunlight.

The sons of these women stay with us, one of them being especially playful, other a bit shy. We do our best with urdidor, but time flies, the sewing course ends and we have to go back to Xela without finishing it on our own. Polina and Santa promise to finish it for us, clumsy European girls, so that next time we could already start with preparing it for actual waving.

On our way to the car we see some kids coming home from school (both communities have their own schools too and a total of almost 100 children from different age-groups). Kids look happy as everywhere, where they have their safe homes, friends and family. We wave them goodbye and go back home being dusty but cheerful. Till next week, Pacutama and Chuicutama! Then we’ll probably get more familiar with the backstrap loom – their main tool for making the beautiful fabrics you see in our store.

Melting icebergs, cities covered by a thick layer of smog, turbid rivers and oceans and miserable forests – those are the scenarios that usually show up when talking and thinking about our common future. Yet our common future may also look a lot more positive. After all, we increasingly take a critical stance towards our own behavior. But what precisely can we do to change the tide? How can we look at the future with more confidence?

I’d like to draw your attention to the book “Duurzaam denken en doen” (something like “thinking and acting sustainably”), a book that was recently published in the Netherlands as part of the project “Our Common Future 2.0” – a continuation on the famous 1987-UN-research report Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland report, which for the first time called for sustainable development (Jan Jonker (red), Duurzaam Denken en Doen, Kluwer, Nijmegen 2011).

Rather than painting the well-know bleak images, this book gives some answers to the question “how to change the tide”. In fact, it does not give some answers, it gives a whole bunch of answers, often very concrete ideas, on how we all can contribute to a society where also our grandchildren can still enjoy the wonders of nature and the beauties of our planet. For nineteen themes ranging from ecomomics to spirituality to leadership and garbage, the authors invented a vision and formulated tips that we (often) can use in our own little daily lives.

Fascinatingly, the authors comprised a group of no less than 400 volunteers who were brought together in short notice after a call of the initiator, Jan Jonker, through the social media. Indeed, in conformance with its subtitle “inspirational book for our common future” an inspiring piece of work – if not for its content than for the way in which the book was realized! 

Till next time!

Marisha

I’m Dominika, I come from Poland, since December I’ve been working as a volunteer at Y’abal Handicraft. Last weekend we had a chance to go to one of the communities that we are helping. It’s called Pacatuma and it’s situated in the Alaska mountains, two hours by bus from Xela. It wasn’t my first time there, but it was the first time that I had a chance to spend a night in Pacatuma and fully participate in the life of the community.
Our purpose was to teach the women how to use the natural dyeing methods. The thread they normally use while weaving is already colored when we buy it. This time we wanted to introduce the methods that include the use of such ingredients as carrot, coffee leaves, avocado. indigo and many more.
We arrived at Pacatuma very early with Doña Rosario, the woman from the Atitlan Lake that is a real expert on the natural dyeing. We brought a lot of stuff with us – white thread (it’s really heavy!), pots, different ingredients. On the arrival we all gathered at house of Santa (one of the women) and started our preparations. All process was really complicated and both us and women took notes so later they could do it all by themselves without mistakes. Everybody was grinding, cutting, crushing… To get each of the colors we had to cook the thread several times, for a very exact number of minutes, adding certain ingredients. We did it all outside, on the fire. As we were working with a few colors simultaneously it was quite a challenge to coordinate everything, but thanks to Santa and Paulina (the presidents of the community) that were keeping an eye on everything we managed not to mix carrot with avocado or indigo and everything went perfect.
During two days we obtained 16 different colors (you can see photos on our facebook profile). The shades were really beautiful and one can feel and see a great difference between the artificially dyed thread and the natural one. The women really liked the new technique, even though it requires a lot of patience and attention. In the future we would like to introduce the natural dyeing methods in our production process.

Apart from that quite detailed knowledge about the dyeing process that we learned together with the women, I had a chance to share the experience of everyday life in the community. Pacatuma is situated in really high mountains. During the day the sun is very strong, but only for a few hours. Than the temperature goes even below zero, leaving the water covered with thin ice. The ground isn’t very fertile and the volcanic dust is really annoying, it gets everywhere, leaving you immediately dirty. So, obviously, as it got later it also got colder. We were slowly finishing the dyeing process and there was a fire left burning on so we all gathered around the flames to warm up a little. There were so many stars above us that you could never see in European cities blinded by the flood of electricity. A donkey was crying harshly somewhere behind our backs, and children started singing in language that was a mixture of Quiche and Spanish, trying to teach us the words of the song about the little cat that couldn’t swim…
It’s the memory of Guatemala that I will take home.

D.

]]> http://yabal-handicrafts.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=29 0 http://yabal-handicrafts.com/blog/?p=26 http://yabal-handicrafts.com/blog/?p=26#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:51:14 +0000 Y´abal http://yabal-handicrafts.com/blog/?p=26  

Being in Belgium again for two months made me think about a lot of things in our society. Belgium has so many advantages, like social security, health care and safety.

But sometimes I get very disappointed, walking in the shopping streets of Hasselt, passing hundreds of store with very cheap cloths, way too many to sell. They will be waist and changed the next season by another pill of cheap cloths. A part from this, seeing young and old buying tons of these clothes and knowing that will get lost in a huge wardrobe. People don´t think about it. Money makes it unnecessary to think about what you buy and big companies know it.

This makes it so much harder for small businesses in development countries to survive. So think when you buy something! And maybe it´s worth spending once and a while a little bit more for a fair trade product then buying 2 of the same factory made bags. What do you think?

Melissa

Clearly, Y’abal Handicrafts’ main mission is to generate opportunities for women in Guatemala. Yet, our corporate social responsibility does not stop at the borders of this country in Latin America: recently, I, the partner in the Netherlands, started a collaboration with “Mode Met een Missie” (meaning “fashion with a mission”; its website, http://www.modemeteenmissie.nl, is only available in Dutch, unfortunately). This foundation offers women in a vulnerable position a step towards a paid job by teaching them how to sew. In january, the women in the workshop in Nijmegen will start sewing pillows and tablecloths – with the fabrics woven by the women in Guatemala (with, by the way, beautiful new designs!). Ergo, literally a win-win collaboration across and on both sides of the ocean!

 Till we meet again, take care!

Marisha

I would like to talk a bit about the creation of our products.
The main goal of the Y´abal project is creating a new source of income for these poor community of female weavers by selling their products made on the back strap loom.

Maya-women have been weaving on the back strap loom for thousands of years. Y´abal Handicrafts seeks to maintain this ancient technique and integral part of Mayan culture; an art that women can also perform while taking care of the household and children.

Although the great skills of these women and the creativity in their work, their art is not always appreciated in our globalized world, due to cheap and bad quality imitations, but also the demand for new en modern designs to compete in the market.

That is one of reasons why we´ve organized skills workshops in the last 3 years to improve the quality and consistency of their work, self-esteem, and group organization and coordination. In March 2010 we became a registered company and opened a store in Quetzaltenango, with the mission of offering quality products, that are a combination of ancient Maya weaving and modern design.

To compete in the global market we try to design products for a western market, but always inspired by the traditional clothing and designs of the women from our weaving groups. Also the women themselves often bring new ideas for fabrics and designs.

Additionally through changing shapes of the bags, using fashion colors and high quality yarn the bags of Y´abal Handicrafts want to escape for the typical textile products from Guatemala, and be a new fusion products for western fashion lovers, with a conscience mind for fair trade and handmade products.

Visit our facebook page to have a look at our latest products from our male collection.

Greetings, Melissa

Y’abal handicrafts trabaja bajo las condiciones de Comercio Justo; garantizando que las mujeres tejedoras, tengan una participación adecuada del beneficio total.
Se enfoca en la mujer como motor de desarrollo de la familia y actúa como facilitadora  de capacitación y apoyo integral a su desarrollo. La organización busca mantener viva una tradición manufacturera del telar de cintura, expandir mercados y comercializar con marca propia.

Con la adquisición de los productos hechos a mano en telar de cintura, usted no solo contribuye con un ingreso directoy justo para las tejedoras, sino su compra aporta también en la realización del programa social y de capacitaciones.