Lucydania

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Lucydania by Microfinanzas PRISMA in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 months, Microfinanzas PRISMA will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Mrs. Lucy Dania Castellanos Yarin sews tapestries on request in the veritable artist-colony pueblo of San Pedro de Cajas in the sierra Junín province in Peru. She used your loan to buy a third machine that is smaller and more suited for her type of work; additionally, now her family has enough machines for her, her husband, and her oldest son – after school, of course - to all work on their own machine (in picture, son’s is on top left and husband’s is on top right). Lucy is famous in her town for her extraordinary ability to make complex tapestries completely from memory. Most artisans here tape a photo of the proposed scene on the top of their machine; Lucy thinks of an image and colors and just goes from that. Mrs. Castellanos Yarin makes her tapestries on request: a client will say certain colors or type of scene and she will make it. She makes one tapestry a day and sells it for 11 soles to an intermediary in San Pedro. With the third machine that your loan allowed her to purchase, the family’s profits have increased since no one ever has to be idle (ie if son has to leave his work unfinished, it does not affect Lucy’s ability to start another tapestry). The tapestries are made of wool. Lucy has what looks like a stick covered by blue jean material that she uses to press the wool so it won’t disintegrate when she weaves it. The machine bought with your loan was made by a local carpenter and cost 240 soles; the rest of the loan went into materials, etc. Mrs. Castellanos Yarin has four children. The oldest is 15, the next- 13, Emily is 3 (peeking behind machine), and Lady is 1 year old.

I can only post one photo per journal update, otherwise this second entry would be unnecessary.

I took a photo of Lady that I thought some of you might enjoy. Although it is obvious Lady doesn't actually slave away on a weaving machine like her mother, brother, and father, the tradition and skill of weaving IS passed down from generation to generation in the town of San Pedro de Cajas. Another entrepreneur who I interviewed in San Pedro told me that kids can usually operate the machine by the time they're seven or eight, and work after school starting in high school (~14). San Pedro's municipal government has invested the state's resources in furthering this artisanal tradition by opening a School of Fine Arts (it's a post high school program... they call these institutes. my feeling is they're like vocational schools or JuCos).

But whatever the underlying social indicators in the photo, you gotta admit: Lady is pretty dang cute.