Project updates! + brochure and catalog

We’re mooooving on up! Tooo the east side….

Or at least making some progress, with mucho help from our friends back home.

We now have both a logo and a name for the project and the IU student group. The student group will be named the Indiana-Ecuador Partnership for Sustainable Development. Many thanks to its members for their hard work in all of this: Elliot, Alex, Laura, and Alyssa. You also can see our fantastic new logo below in the brochure and catalog, created by the fabulous Emily. A thousand thanks to all of you.

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We just finished making an informational brochure about the organization, a catalog for the women’s artesanias that will be taken around to businesses over the upcoming breaks, and are close to finishing a project proposal to present to foundations, NGOs, etc.

You can check out the files (and send them to all your friends) here: Las Flores Designs Catalog 

We met with the national director of education last week, courtesy of Isabel’s mom, and he accomplished in about 3 and a half minutes what was taking us weeks to do. He arranged meetings with some important folks and saved us hours of scouring the Internet by directing us to the pertinent ministries we should contact for other projects.

What we’re up to – II

Saludos,

We just got back again from three days in the community. As before, we spent much of the time trying to keep warm in our four layers of clothing and fleece vests, while the kids run around in t-shirts warm and happy. We’ve started teaching English to the younger children–kindergarten- and first grade- aged. We have to oscillate between versions of Professor Snape and Bozo the Clown to try to keep these little ones focused. And we’re sure getting a lot of singing practice teaching “Mary had a Little Lamb” and “Itsy bitsy Spider.”

We spent numerous hours this week crisscrossing the calles of Riobamba, trying to track down local education officials about getting a classroom built, hiring a Quichua teacher, and getting the federally mandated internet hook-up at the school. In comparison with our earlier experiences negotiating the bureaucracy of Quito, the officials we met were far more helpful. Unfortunately, there is usually someone above that must be consulted first, and this person is invariably at a far-away conference or out to lunch for the next four hours.

The week was still fairly productive, or at least felt that way. We drew up some very pretty contracts for the women artisans, as a sort of incentive to keep working on their crafts. Isabel went to electromagnetic therapy for her knee, which has pained her for months now. The therapy is apparently really a massage – at the molecular level. We googled the treatment and, as it turns out, the pharmaceutical lobby in the US is trying to get it banned for being more effective than Advil.

Isabel with some of our students

Our view on the way to the local tienda

A shigra in progress

We are spending the rest of the week here in Quito, coming up with a project proposal to present to government officials and foundations, in the hopes of getting money for the community and for ourselves to return to continue our work. We may also be spending quite a bit of time trying to view the latest episodes of our favorite American sitcoms, which we desperately miss.

Wishing you all nights as starry as ours, but a lot warmer, and better access to the new season of 30 Rock (go Tina Fey!),

Erica and Isabel

Spinning party

Some photos of a late-night meeting of the women’s organization as they work on their artesanias.

One of the finest examples of a shigra we’ve seen, made by a woman years ago who is too blind to make any more

Finally we get a smile for our photos, though it was inadvertent

Our friend Pedro helping out the women

Our ‘hood

Photos around San Gerardo

With Johnny, Luis Alberto, and Juan Daniel

Marco, the school’s top student

Lined up for breakfast at the school

The church and Chimborazo

What we´re up to

Winter has settled on Ecuador and, while the cold holds no comparison to that all you in the northeast and midwest will be enjoying in a month and half and there has only been snow once in Quito (a month ago, courtesy probably of global warming), we have a hard time staying warm and dry and are treating ourselves to several cups of hot chocolate or coffee a day. We are in Quito for the week, working on finding funding for ourselves to return after the Christmas holidays (if you know of any travel grants or rich people looking for ways to spend their money, let us know!) and for the community´s projects. Later in the week, we are going to a monestary in Ipiales, Colombia, for a day and a half so Erica can renew her tourist non-visa and to check out the apparently fantastic deals on underwear that exist all over the clothing factory-rich country.

Yesterday we celebrated Dia de los Muertos by drinking colada morada, a chunky blood-colored drink of herbs and fruit, and eating bread in the shape of guaguas, meaning children in Quechua. Many people like enjoying these festivities amongst their dead relatives at the local cemetary. Erica, for one, liked the food, but prefers eating dead birds and giving semi-conscious thanks to genocided Native Americans.

We´ve been working in the community for the last three weeks, coming home on the weekends to shower up and stuff ourselves with food. On a couple of nights, we have joined the women´s organization in spinning the wool they had sheared from their sheep and dying it in various colors for the bags, scarves, and hats. Isabel also arranged a meeting with a local NGO called Randimpak that coordinates the exportation of organic quinoa, as well as other food products, to countries around the world, and which provides educational and medical support.

We’ve been teaching after-school English classes at the school in SG, as well as the occasional regular day classes when a professor has been unable to come in. We’ve been forced to recall the various rules of fractions, made still more difficult by having to teach them in Spanish to a bunch of unwilling 10-year-olds. Far easier it was to teach the songs “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” which they practically scream for. After school, our students often stop by our house to check up on us and our exotic ways. They´ve also been great to show us around the town, telling us where everything is and asking their parents and grandparents at home for Quechua words to teach us in the afternoons. To help them and their families out, we would like to get together a hygiene product and school supply drive back at IU. If you’re interested in working on this, please let us know!

Tomorrow, we are looking forward to spending an evening in a restaurant in the tourist section of Quito, watching the election results come in. Get your vote on, America!

Abrazos,

Erica and Isabel

Artesanias marketing drive!

We still need several more people to help us advertise the women´s products in local businesses. It would be especially fabulous if people that live outside of Bloomington or Louisville could spare a few hours over Thanksgiving or Christmas break to take a jaunt around their hometowns to visit local fair trade shops or upscale gift stores with our soon-to-be created product information packet.

If you are interested, let us know!

Shigras unavailable until after December

Thank you to all of you who have ordered products through this site. We especially have had a great response to the shigras woven bags and will have to discontinue offering them until after December. There are not many women in the community capable of making the bags right now, and the women who can make them have limited time to spend making the products until we can guarantee them a constant income from their production (see two posts down to find out how to help). Very happily, though, several more have become interested in re-discovering this art after all of the orders came rolling in. We hope to offer these bags again after Christmas, but in the meantime we hope you will check out the other products on offer below. We should have better pictures and design information up about these sometime next week.