Inspiring Wayuus

Years later, in 2010, fate intervened and my partner offered a job in Colombia. A few weeks after landing in Bogotá, I made a trip to La Guajira with my little daughter to see for myself the Wayúu crafts on which I had read years before.

In La Guajira I found a fascinating, but deeply impoverished community. If Colombia was in a fast line to become a developed country, La Guajira had stayed behind in the process and in the rush. I immediately realized that Wayúu women lacked economic power. He knew that if he could train women to earn a decent balance, he could improve the life of the entire community. That is why I set out to use my skills and experience to help the Wayúu community.

Between 2011 and 2012 I conducted different socio-anthropological studies visiting and living with different indigenous communities, in different parts of La Guajira. In addition, I studied several manual techniques, not only with the aim of demonstrating the different fabric techniques used by the different communities, but also to highlight the ancestral meaning of Wayúus designs. It took me about two years to understand their culture and also be part of the community and be formally accepted by them in their ranches.

I understood that the traditional fabric technique needed support or was going to be in danger of extinction and that women should be able to make a living dignity thanks to their crafts. I learned that the community had been exploited; People came to the region to buy wholesale bandits, but refused to pay a fair price and forced the community to run with the deadlines, which compromised the quality of their work. To weave a single bandit, with traditional techniques, a woman takes between twenty and thirty days, working eight hours a day.

To get some help, in 2013, I created the Sacred Thread Foundation.

My story shows the ability of each and every one of us to change other people's lives, even in a country that is not yours.

Sabrina Prioli, 2015.