This is a dream come true,” Ayde
Riveros repeated various times during her first
few days in the states. She and fellow Peruvian
artisan, Evangelina Pizarro, toured throughout
the Midwest and Colorado, accompanied by Carrie
Hawthorne, PJT’s director and Yochi Zakai,
Green America’s Fair Trade Program Coordinator.
Resonating
Change: Connecting Communities through Fair
Trade visited 11 cities and spoke to
over 1,300 individuals.
The message the
artisans delivered was powerful: Fair Trade
empowers individuals to overcome cultural,
social and even personal barriers and improve
their lives. Ayde and Eva's stories resonated
with the audiences and helped people comprehend
the imbalances that most Americans realize
exist but haven’t necessarily digested.
Audiences were particularly surprised to hear
tales of labor abuse, such as Ayde working two
weeks to knit four sweaters and never being
paid, and Eva working 12 hour days, 6 days a
week in a jewelry factory to be paid only $75 a
month.
Ayde and
Evangelina told crowds how their lives have
changed for the better under Fair Trade. Ayde,
who explains herself as always have been timid
and afraid to speak in groups, is now not only
able to participate in small groups but also
proved to be an eloquent public speaker to
large audiences on this tour. She and the other
45 knitters in her group, El Mercurio, are now
able to tell their husbands “Men and women are
equal and I have a right to make decisions in
my household,” Ayde said. Eva spoke of the
importance of being one’s own boss, “No longer
am I exploited by someone else. I set my own
hours and now have time to be a mother to my
two daughters.”
And while audience
members were affected by Ayde and Evangelina’s
stories, the artisans were also transformed by
the tour. “Watching the artisans grow both
personally and professionally in such a short
time was remarkable,” Hawthorne said. Their
first time out of Peru, the artisans
continually repeated throughout the visit, "I
have something to tell my grandchildren about."
Hawthorne, who has lived and
worked in developing countries for over four
years in the past decade said, "It’s hard for
us as Americans to grasp all of the new things
that Ayde and Eva experienced for the first
time during this visit. I had forgotten that
even the smallest things, like figuring out how
to get soap of the dispenser in public
restrooms or using a seatbelt, could be so
foreign and such a challenge to figure out."
Some of the highlights of “firsts” that
occurred during the tour include: public
speaking, reading a book and writing in a
journal (PJT gave Ayde and Eva each a book and
journal at the start of the tour), riding a
bike, riding on a boat, being the 77th floor of
a building (Ayde had never been higher than the
fourth floor), visiting the zoo…and so much
more.
“Everyone was so kind and
generous. They listened to us and treated us so
well. It was an unforgettable trip,” Eva
said.
To see pictures from the
Resonating
Change tour, view our
online
album.
If you would like to
download a copy of the presentation given on
Fair Trade during the tour, you can do so
here.
