Indigenous women who take refuge in the shelters administered in Roraima, Brazil, by Fraternidade – International Humanitarian Federation, are learning more and more to value the innate talent they have for artisanship. Encouraged by the Workshops of Artisanship ministered by Fraternidade – 266 only this year, they are applying their abilities better in the development of the pieces and working with new materials, to increase even more the final quality of the products.
The goal of perfecting a practice they bring from cradle is to expand the array of consumers and, in this way, also guarantee a more efficent means of survival. Besides teaching to improve the finishing of pieces and what materials are more recommended for each item, the Workshops also focus on notions of solidary economy, enabling the refugee women to use techniques of sales and formation of prices for their artisanal pieces.
All the trade of the pieces is done by the Indigenous women themselves and Fraternidade does not participate in this financial stage of the process, focusing its action only in the training and the valuing of artisanship, which is part of the Indigenous culture.
In the shelters that are most distant from the consumer centers, however, the team of Fraternidade perceives that the refugees are having difficulties to market the production, as Sister Auxiliadora highlights in the attached video. She highlights the work of the Indigenous women in the Janokoida Shelter, located in Pacaraima, a city of Roraima in the border of Brazil with Venezuela; and also their difficulties to trade their products due to the distance to the consuming points.
“The artisans do not have so many opportunities to sell their production. So, we still need a lot of support for this work to flow, be publicized and to this to really be a way of living for the women”, says Sister Maria Auxiliadora.
Altogether, Fraternidade administers five shelters of Venezuelan refugee in Roraima. Since it began this humanitarian mission in the State, in 2016, it has attended more than 8,000 people in these shelters; of these, more than 1,400 are Indigenous people – today they amount to 1,000, most of them of the Warao and E’ñapa ethnicities.
This work of Fraternidade is done by volunteers and maintained by spontaneous donations. The Workshops of Artisanship are conducted in partnership with the UNHCR – Unted Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which finances the materials utilized.
If you want to help the humanitarian missions, send an e-mail to secretaria@fraterinternacional.org
