Sustaining handloom weaving for the future
Handloom weaving is the second largest employer of rural youth in India, with 200000 weaving families in Andhra Pradesh alone. Yet 90% of weavers are below the poverty line, and migrate out of weaving and into the cities as unskilled labour. Weavers see themselves as outdated, and weaving as a skill of no market value. This has consequences for the city as well as the village, rapid urbanization is not environmentally sustainable, and when we lose weavers we lose the knowledge of a centuries old technology, that produces cloth in a manner that is harmonious to nature.
We at Dastkar Andhra therefore work with the institutions that the weaver owns up to, his co-operative, starting with 25 of Andhra’s 600 weaver co-operatives. We aim to build the confidence of the weaver to make a livelihood that he can be proud of, while helping himself out of poverty.
Dastkar Andhra innovates products for contemporary customers, so that they sell at a premium cost, increasing the income of the weaver, and achieves scale through aggregating individual product across weavers to match larger market demands. We provide training and support in dyeing, designing and value addition, to the co-operatives. We ensure stable income to the three hundred weavers we work with, through pre-selling their production, increasing a monthly income which fluctuates between Rs 1500 to Rs. 2500; to a stable Rs. 4000 a month. Over three years, the co-operatives move out of debt, and become sustainable, starting with onlyproviding work also for the other 60% of weaver members who do not weave for Dastkar Andhra.
The shop where we sell handloom straddles the young customer and the weaver in a different way. When a young girl asks the question ‘what will I wear today?’ it is not frivolous. It speaks of knowledge of the self, and the context in which her identity is rooted; a learning which is added to with time. Clothes are part of ritual, colour is symbolic, texture is emotion, and these are lessons passed down through generations much like the knowledge of weaving is passed down from one generation of weavers to the next.
The impoverishment when we lose handloom is therefore not just economic, though that is a big part of it. The weaver has the capability to be a technologist, a designer or even an entrepreneur. Our solution is to re-engage the weaver back to his loom, in a way that is productive for the society he lives in, and in a way that gives him his self esteem and sense of purpose back. In doing so, we hope to re-engage the young customer, to her sense of self, and awaken her ability to contribute to the planet she lives on.
Handloom weaving is the second largest employer of rural youth in India, with 200000 weaving families in Andhra Pradesh alone. Yet 90% of weavers are below the poverty line, and migrate out of weaving and into the cities as unskilled labour. Weavers see themselves as outdated, and weaving as a skill of no market value. This has consequences for the city as well as the village, rapid urbanization is not environmentally sustainable, and when we lose weavers we lose the knowledge of a centuries old technology, that produces cloth in a manner that is harmonious to nature.
We at Dastkar Andhra therefore work with the institutions that the weaver owns up to, his co-operative, starting with 25 of Andhra’s 600 weaver co-operatives. We aim to build the confidence of the weaver to make a livelihood that he can be proud of, while helping himself out of poverty.
Dastkar Andhra innovates products for contemporary customers, so that they sell at a premium cost, increasing the income of the weaver, and achieves scale through aggregating individual product across weavers to match larger market demands. We provide training and support in dyeing, designing and value addition, to the co-operatives. We ensure stable income to the three hundred weavers we work with, through pre-selling their production, increasing a monthly income which fluctuates between Rs 1500 to Rs. 2500; to a stable Rs. 4000 a month. Over three years, the co-operatives move out of debt, and become sustainable, starting with onlyproviding work also for the other 60% of weaver members who do not weave for Dastkar Andhra.
The shop where we sell handloom straddles the young customer and the weaver in a different way. When a young girl asks the question ‘what will I wear today?’ it is not frivolous. It speaks of knowledge of the self, and the context in which her identity is rooted; a learning which is added to with time. Clothes are part of ritual, colour is symbolic, texture is emotion, and these are lessons passed down through generations much like the knowledge of weaving is passed down from one generation of weavers to the next.
The impoverishment when we lose handloom is therefore not just economic, though that is a big part of it. The weaver has the capability to be a technologist, a designer or even an entrepreneur. Our solution is to re-engage the weaver back to his loom, in a way that is productive for the society he lives in, and in a way that gives him his self esteem and sense of purpose back. In doing so, we hope to re-engage the young customer, to her sense of self, and awaken her ability to contribute to the planet she lives on.
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