About Mamacha
Mamacha buys products from four key groups in Peru. Two are located in Lima, one in Pitumarca and one in Tarma. Three of the groups have been set up by nuns who have lived and worked in the communities for years, in a response to a desperate need for employment and income. Amy first met the nuns while living in Australia between 2003 and 2008 and helped to establish and market a product range, starting with the first group, Casa Betania in Lima. As demand for the products increased, more knitting groups were formed, and today over two hundred women are working in the four groups.
Click
here
for a Google map of Peru with our workshops flagged.
From 1980 to 2000, Peru suffered widespread human rights violations during conflict between the armed forces and opposition groups such as the Shining Path. Abuses included disappearances, executions, unfair trials and torture as civil war raged through the country. People were forced to flee the
devastating destruction of their villages and communities, particularly in the central highlands.
Many took refuge in the capital, Lima, building make-shift homes in the shanty towns on the outskirts of the city. Today there is still extreme poverty in Lima and there are high levels of unemployment and underemployment. In Peru as a whole more than half the population live below the poverty line. The groups Mamacha support aim to help those affected by these statistics.
The Groups
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Casa Betania, in
El Pacifico, Lima was started fifteen years ago by Sister Dorothy Stevenson and Rosa Pacheco, in response to a desperate need to generate employment in the area, particularly for women.
The group now consists of approximately eleven women who are employed full time, and another eight women who work when demand is high. They specialise in making bags, and also make children's clothing and jumpers on small knitting machines, finished with hand embroidery. They now run as an independent business and pride themselves on the excellent quality of their products. It is a friendly place to work, everyone is considered equal and all salaries are made public. Birthdays are celebrated together and at Christmas everyone receives a sack of essentials such as rice and sugar. The key materials they use are cotton (including an organic, fairtrade certified cotton which they source from Naturtex in Lima) and an alpaca mix which is 50% alpaca and 50% acrylic. Amy has worked with the ladies at Casa Betania for three years and is close friends with them, speaking with them weekly. When Casa Betania was formed fifteen years ago, it was on the very edge of Lima, and infrastructure and roads were lacking. Nowadays, the area is built up and shanty houses are nestled amongst better houses and parks. However, it is still an area of great need and Mamacha is committed to continuing to provide work to the women there.
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Recognising that Lima's areas of most need were the very outskirts of Lima, Sr Clare Conaglen settled in
Cruz de Motupe, in northwest Lima. In 2006 she started to organise a group of about fifteen local women and provided them with materials to start knitting hats, socks and ponchos. Over the next two years, they sent regular parcels of their work and Amy guided them on products and colours. When she suggested they make Christmas tree surrounds in the arpillera technique (involving collage and embroidery techniques to depict a typical Peruvian scene), they were very doubtful of their abilites but promised to try. Working from just a photo, they slowly realised that they were capable of making extraordinary pieces of work, and began to experiment with individual designs. Apparently they were quite tearful when they finished, and said they felt proud of themselves and that their families, who hadn't thought they could complete the work, were full of respect for them! When Amy returned to Lima in 2008, she noticed a significant change in the women. They seemed much happier and more confident and had formed tight bonds as a group. They talked animatedly and spoke of renewed self-esteem. Best of all, they are now teaching other women to knit, and travel in pairs to surrounding suburbs where there is most need. They consider themselves fortunate and see themselves as leaders that can help other women and they underline the importance of sharing their experiences and advice with these women, who are often young mothers with little other support. In the last year, Sr Clare has started another small group in the local 'Comedor', or soup kitchen, where mothers are learning to use some basic knitting machines under the guidance of Simon, who himself is in desperate need of an income. Sr Clare has also helped around ten particularly needy families that live in shacks on the hills surrounding Motupe by arranging for them to learn to make wristbands. They are families that have suffered extreme hardship, but that do not have the skills to knit or find other paid work, so Clare wanted to find a means of income for them. You can read more about their stories here.
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Tarma
is an Andean town about 10 hours east of Lima by bus. Sr Dorothy, who helped to found Casa Betania, has lived there for over 18 years and is now encouraging women in Tarma to start knitting. Around 40 women are making ponchos, children’s clothing, hats, socks, blankets and wall hangings for sale. They are a very vibrant, enthusiastic group and are keen for more work. Some raw materials are not easily sourced in Tarma, and Nelly from Casa Betania sends alpaca wool to them on the bus so that they can knit the ponchos and socks. Other products are made with sheepswool that the women buy locally, and is often handspun. The women meet weekly in Sr Dorothy's house and knit together whilst discussing their work, ideas for improvements to the products and offering support and friendship to eachother. To get to Tarma, you have to travel by bus, and drive over the highest road pass in Peru (Ticlio), at 4818 metres. Nearby is the remote and isolated village of Huasa Huasi, where Sr Dorothy lived until the Shining Path guerrillas took control of the village and executed several community leaders, including Sr Dorothy's sister, Irene McCormack. Juana and Diana, two women who live there, crochet the beautiful Huasa Huasi scarves. About 2 hours drive away is the small town of San Pedro de Cajas where the traditional wall hangings originate from. Some of the women in the Tarma group, such as Haydee, Silvia, Belinda and Justa, are expert in this technique and Sr Dorothy has purchased a wooden loom so that they can make the wall hangings.
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Pitumarca
is a remote, rural area high in the Andes. It is about 2 hours drive from Cusco, heading south towards Sicuani, and half an hour along a bumpy track which turns off at Checacupe.
Although the landscape is stunningly beautiful, in a rural location like this, there is little work for women, and the men work in the surrounding fields or doing maintenance work for the Municipality for about $2 a day.
Our trading scheme has opened up a new opportunity for women to earn much-needed extra income. Around 100 women in the village and surrounding areas are involved in knitting hats, scarves, mittens and ponchos, finger puppets and Christmas cards. All products are made from 100% alpaca which is purchased in Cusco from Michell, a well known alpaca manufacturer. Sr Cathy Dean and Sr Angela Carroll have set up a reception area in the front room of their house where women can come in and collect wool to knit a scarf, or whatever product is in demand, in the colour that is in demand. They knit in their own time, often early in the morning or while they are walking with the animals to pasture. They usually knit for a couple of hours a day, on and off. This means that the work does not interfere with their daily lives. When they have finished the product, they return to the nun's house and immediately recieve cash in hand payment. Veronica is a local mother who mans the workshop and checks the quality and measurements of the garment and encourages newcomers on their progress. The language spoken is Quechua. Each woman has her own card that records the products she has completed and she signs to say she has received payment. There are about 90 women signed up to the program and each woman completes one piece per fortnight, or several smaller pieces to the same value, in order to ensure everyone gets the same amount of work. It is a wonderful sight to see so many women benefitting regularly from the scheme.
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