Threads of Peru is pleased to announce that their recent funding application to the UK-based charity, the LATA Foundation was successful.
The LATA foundation is dedicated to promoting sustainable development in Latin America and responsible business practices in the tourism industry. It was originally conceived and set up by members of the Latin American Travel Association (LATA) and is overseen by an independent board of Trustees.
Threads of Peru submitted a comprehensive application (compiled by Canadian volunteer Calina Ellwand) which outlined history of the project, specific details of projects this year, and also our goals through to 2016, when we plan the project will have become self sustaining.
LATA´s funding of $3,000 is funding the purchasing of dyes for the dying workshops and equipment such as measuring tapes, triangles, markers, needles, and sewing machines. The final project funded by the LATA Foundation (for the end of the year) is the establishment of a native plants dye garden.
The LATA Foundation funding is only for material items, therefore the remainder of the costs for the monthly workshops (payment of teachers, transport, translators, meals and other incidentals) still remains with Threads of Peru. (If you would like to support us please refer to http://www.threadsofperu.com/get-involved/)
Threads of Peru would like to thank the LATA Foundation for their funding, and confidence in our projects.
For further information about the LATA Foundation, please see www.latafoundation.org
When I first visited the communities of Chaullacocha and Chupani, I realized that these communities were far from my expectations. To call them ¨communities¨ paints images in ones´ mind of houses, streets, and stores. However, Chaullacocha and Chupani are really a mere settlement of small stone and adobe homes separated by great distances of chakra (fields). In Chaullacocha, there is only one small store that stocks staples such as pasta, sugar, and rice. One feels the remoteness of the area after spending a few days there, free from cell phone reception, television, electricity, and a four hour walk to the nearest road which is still over 20 kilometers from the town of Ollantaytambo. 
I didn´t anticipate how hard it would be to break cultural and linguistic barriers in my interactions with community members. The female weavers are especially reserved and generally speak less Spanish than their husbands who often work as porters on the Inca Trail and travel more frequently to Spanish-speaking areas. Thus, I have suffered through some slow interviews and later realized that I could gather more information from women who spoke some Spanish or who were more extroverted. My digital voice recorder helped the interview process. I would record conversations that were moderated through my translator, Urbano Huayna, and he would later help me translate them from Quechua to Spanish. I found a digital voice recorder to be a great tool in insuring the accuracy of the conversation for later use. Not surprisingly, children were the easiest to interact with, as they were as curious about me as I was about them. Once, I visited the primary school in Chaullacocha and illustrated through a map where I was from and how far that was from Peru. I helped the children learn color names, starting with Spanish, moving to English, and finally reciting the words in Quechua. These have been strategies I have used to facilitate interaction with community members despite facing great cultural and linguistic obstacles.
