Workshop with Café Igaraí Round 2

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This post is going to be divided into a few separate parts. First, a recap of the workshop Lisa and Maia facilitated with Café Igaraí (for which I translated). Second, relating a thought-provoking conversation with Silvia from last night about her vision for fostering change in the region. Third, a mini current events recap which will continue unfolding as I learn more.

The amazing Lisa and Maia worked late into yesterday evening and awoke early this morning to plan a wonderful workshop for Café Igaraí. Their three goals were: 1) create stationery prototypes as possible new products; 2) design a new layout for the work room; and 3) continue the drawing and technique exercises begun on Tuesday. The stationery prototypes were really creative and beautiful. Using paper handmade out of recycled materials by students in two after-school programs in Mococa, Artesanato and Grupo TUMM , they designed a large and a small example of a card that folds up into its own envelope. When opened, one side is blank for writing and another is cut into a frame under which an embroidered piece of fabric can be glued or secured.

It is hard to explain the actual structure but I can explain the benefits - which the women of Café Igaraí understood and appreciated the moment they saw the prototypes! Each card or piece of stationery can be made out of a single piece of paper using a few simple cuts. The only waste is where the frame is cut out, and that paper can be repurposed to reinforce the button that will seal the folded card as an envelope. As the card is self-contained, no extra paper is used for an envelope and there is no issue of a given card not fitting into a given envelope (and ending up with extra inventory). The fabric to be embroidered is scrap fabric, of which Café Igaraí has plenty. Since the space in the cards is small, the amount of embroidery work per card is relatively low (compared to embroidering a whole napkin or placement, for example). And using the paper from these after-school projects, NGOs in Mococa, supports the local community, recycling and helps develop stronger linkages between social projects (see below).

The women were super excited about the stationery - we presented them near the end of the workshop and they were totally giddy! They loved the design and started listing all the benefits to adopting these as a new product, which I just tried to summarize. It was really cool to see their passion and pragmatism tied to something so concrete and at the same time to witness some of the group dynamics. Case in point: Rosangela, who is in charge of the domestic side of FAF, is one of the de facto (and maybe actually elected, I don’t know) leaders of Café Igaraí. While all the women were admiring the stationery, she and another woman, Dona (Mrs.) Cida, starting interjecting and saying things like, “Yeah, these are really cool, so you know what we have to do? Someone has to commit to embroidering a sample over the weekend and bringing it in on Tuesday. Otherwise we are all going to come back here and still be saying how cool these papers are, and twiddling our thumbs and not getting shit done!” (that is my rough translation of much cooler-sounding Portuguese). Then they started debating who would take the samples, and people made excuses about having other commitments, so Rosangela and Cida were busy convincing the ones they KNEW didn’t have other commitments, or who were very artistic. They finally got Vani, who makes amazing cakes, and Silvia (a different one) who is a really good drawer, to do the embroidery. I obviously have no way of knowing these women’s personal lives but it was really cool to see people taking charge, taking responsibility, straight up recognizing the business opportunity for these cards, etc. Vani and Silvia said they were going to record the amount of time spent on embroidery and calculate materials cost to figure out an overall cost to produce each card, and how much each card could/should be sold for, but estimated a pretty decent profit (about 100%, given about a R$3 unit cost and a R$6 sale price). I’m sitting there like, shit, these women have mostly either not worked or had domestic or agriculture-related jobs their entire lives and definitely don’t have an advanced education, yet they are so shrewd about business, marketing and value. Of course some of the women are less vocal, participatory, or knowledgeable than others but that’s how group dynamics work. (Or I am going to dig deeper into that issue in another post).

With regard to redesigning the work space, Lisa and Maia came up with some really cool plans, very detailed, based on our measurements from Tuesday and where the roof leaks sometimes in the rainy season. We didn’t end up presenting the plan but at the beginning of the meeting we asked Vani’s opinion about a few things. She pointed out that the angles of the morning and afternoon sun are such that it is necessary to have two sewing machines, one on each side of the room. Lisa and Maia had put all the sewing/assembly process in one part of the room - by the windows, to take advantage of the natural light. But now they have to take into account a fact that they weren’t aware of before, and might not have been had we not been chatting with Vani and asking for her help translating phrases like “sewing table” into Portuguese. Another question we had was about the use of a set of shelves that had pieces of tape with each woman’s name on it. There was nothing on the shelves so we assumed it was for purses, miscellaneous items, etc. But actually it is where each woman puts her finished embroidery so that each is justly compensated for her work on a given order. So whereas we considered using those shelves for another purpose (I’m not sure what), they already had a very specific purpose that for the time being is not going to change. But I thought that conversation was interesting because, first of all, it is a really concrete example of the idea that this is an exchange, that we are learning just as much or more from them as they learn from us. And for outsiders coming into any social project with the intention to “help,” the most important criteria is the need to listen to, respect and celebrate the needs and desires of that group/project. So many designers or consultants or students or whoever swoop in from the outside with “solutions” or even “suggestions” that don’t take into account the existing infrastructure, to say nothing of local knowledge, expertise, customs, etc. So I thought it was cool to see that all in action, and for Lisa and Maia to right away go back to the drawing board, excited about adapting to new parameters.

Lisa and Maia also conducted some more drawing workshops, and since this post is getting long (and there is still a lot to write!) I’m going to be a little less verbose about this part. One cool thing we did do was create viewfinders out of a single sheet of paper and draw still lives through the little window (that’s how I said it in Portuguese, anyway). The cool thing is seeing the women go from being nervous or self-conscious about drawing at the beginning of the workshop and less than an hour later laughing and sharing with each other their art, regardless of improvement or talent. Then after the viewfinder exercise they all wanted to save the viewfinders to do it again sometime on their own! So that was really cool. Translating artistic concepts is really hard, not being an artist, by the way.

Switching topics: Silvia and I had a really great conversation last night while the girls were making stationery. She was telling me a lot of the history of Café Igaraí, the region, FAF, the people involved, etc. She shared with me her personal vision: to build up the region by connecting all the actors in the social puzzle. Fostering communication, cooperation and mutual exchange between NGOs, women’s organizations, young people, the police, the schools, companies, fazendas/farms, etc. Dealing with multiple issues at a time - women’s empowerment, young people using drugs, police turning the other cheek, chemicals in agriculture. Instead of focusing only on minute issues and in a sense wearing blinders with respect to other social issues, Silvia passionately promotes dealing with as many issues as possible at the same time. And that is not to say dealing with issues under the umbrella of one big NGO (or business, or government agency) but working with all the groups and actors in the area to encourage understanding and cross-collaboration. I am kind of throwing in my own academia-speak here and not doing justice to Silvia’s incredibly articulate vision. But she has a really radical view of bringing about change - radical in the sense that she wants to attack root causes of social problems and at the same time build cohesive, successful communities from the very core, instead of creating superficial links and ephemeral partnerships. I think she is right on - and this theme is definitely going to return over and over. As always, please, thoughts and feedback and ideas!!

Ok, news recap from the last few days. Ruth Cardoso, the wife of the former president of Brasil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, passed away this week and was buried in São Paulo at the Consolação Cemetary today. I will write more about her after I talk more to Silvia, because she knew her personally. The funny thing is though that I lived right by Consolação Cemetary during my semester abroad and used to walk by it every day looking at the tops of the fancy tombs sticking up over the razor wire bordering the ten-foot stone walls. And I always wondered - which my Dad pointed out later - why a cemetery needed razor wire, since that is usually used to keep people in (i.e. prisons) and not out. Maybe the souls are restless…

Also, I ate a lot of cheese bread / pão de queijo on the bus ride back to São Paulo from Mococa. And, for Luca and Fulvio, I passed the Bosch building in Campinas on the way!

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[Nonna]

falling off the horse
How did you find time to fall off the horse?