In the early part of 2007, the Network was invited by TRAMA Textiles, a women’s weaving cooperative based in Quetzaltenango, to conduct a photo-essay on its partner communities. The young women visited four indigenous communities to record the weavers’ stories in a series of interviews, and to take photographs of the women and their exquisite work.
For the girls in the Network, the project was an opportunity to learn more about their culture, and to see parts of Guatemala that they had never visited. For the women they interviewed, it was, in some cases, the first time they’d been asked to share their ideas, opinions, and recommendations. In one interview, the women volunteered painful testimony about what happened to their community during Guatemala’s civil war – a rare opportunity for them to share the truth of what happened to a younger generation that is farther removed from the horror of that time.
The information collected in the interviews and the photographs are being used to both improve the way the association works with its partner communities, and to promote the weaving cooperative’s fair trade products.
