Cooperative effort benefits three continents

Compassion can bring continents closer together. I’ve written before about Bev Edwards-Sawatzky, the Oyama woman who took 45 poverty-stricken Bolivian women under her wing. Fifteen years ago, when Edwards-Sawatzky saw a display of sweaters knitted by the Minkha Co-operative in Bolivia, she knew she had to get involved. The next year, she flew to Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America, to get to know the knitters and their story personally. Until the late 1980s, the women had lived in Oruro; their men worked in the world’s richest tin mines. Then world tin markets crashed. The mines closed. In that machismo culture, the men abandoned their wives and children and left in search of new jobs. Relocated to Cochabamba, lacking education, employable skills, and incomes, the women eked out an existence on the streets. The only skill they had was knitting.

Comments (0) Number of views (1431)

Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: knitting, Bolivian women

Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

Cooperative effort benefits three continents

Categories

Archive