EMPOWERING THE LOCAL WEAVING COMMUNITIES

Ms. Stephanie Anne Cuevas from Rags2Riches teaching Basic Product Costing to the participating weaving communities

MANDALUYONG CITY, Metro Manila — There is no doubt that the Philippines is a country rich in creativity on arts and crafts embedded in our history and culture. This includes handloom weaving, a traditional craft, that emanated from Philippine ancestral tribes passed on to the current generations.

The Philippine handloom weaving currently falls under the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines that significantly contributes to the economic development of Filipinos from rural and remote communities of the country. Handloom woven products, additionally, now play an important role in the export market as foreign fashion industry raise the promotion and use of natural fabrics. This trend has also started its move in the local fashion.

For more than 30 years, the Philippine Textile Research Institute (PTRI) has trained more than 4,000 weavers/warpers all over the country and assisted 35% of the existing weaving companies on skills training, repair, conversion or modification of handlooms, weave design development and loom execution.

While the interest on handwoven fabrics continues to grow here and abroad, it can still be realized that the textile outputs of the Philippine weaving communities require improvement on quality specifications, standard measurements and design needs of various SME retailers, designers and exporters that cater to both mainstream and niche or artisan markets. In addition to that, handloom weaving uses time-consuming techniques and produces significantly more expensive fabrics than machine-produced materials. Hence, these struggles need to be addressed in order to meet the demands of commercial production.

In order to address the above-mentioned issues, capacitating the weaving community association officers and workers is highly needed. In July 2016, together with the Philippine Commission on Women and funding from the Government of Canada, PTRI inked a memorandum of agreement (MOA) that will provide trainings on basic entrepreneurial skills development of PTRI’s identified regional handloom weaving innovation centers (RHWICs).

Ms. Marife Pidot of Manlilikha ng Bayan Loomweavers Association presenting their activity output

On April 26 & 27, the third of the four (4) modules was implemented. The two-day module concentrated on financial literacy - offering lessons and writing workshops in product costing, money management, standardization, scheduling and inventory management, and fundamentals of accounting facilitated by Ms. Therese Fernandez-Ruiz and Ms. Stephanie Anne Cuevas of Rags 2

Riches, Inc. and Ms. Sha Nacino of Write Conversations. The module was attended by 45 weavers/weaving community officers representing 15 of PTRI’s partner handloom weaving centers throughout the country.

With this module, it is PTRI and PCW’s aim to make handloom weaving a growing, expanding and sustainable business for the weavers, and hopefully for their new generations to switch back to and boost the weaving industry instead of favoring foreign employment and industrial labor.