December 19, 2008, Washington, DC: ADIVIMA and The Advocacy Project (AP) have set a goal to fund four weaving workshops during 2009 for women displaced by the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala.

Throughout the 28 villages affected by the construction of Chixoy Dam, women have different levels of weaving skills and distinct weaving styles. Some villages have no weavers due to the loss of those skills during the internal displacement of the 1980s. In other villages, a family’s survival may be entirely dependent on the meager income these women receive for their elaborate textiles.

Weaving workshops will serve as a form of intellectual repatriation and a step toward economic self-sufficiency for the displaced communities.

ADIVIMA (Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi) works with survivors of massacres and those displaced during Guatemala’s long civil war. AP has partnered with ADIVIMA since 2000.

The “One More Loom” drive will fund four workshops in different displaced communities in Baja and Alta Verapaz: Pacux, San Antonio Panec, Rosario Italia and Colonia Naranjo. ADIVIMA will employ an experienced weaver from each community to offer two one-year treadle loom workshops and two six-month backstrap loom workshops to community members who will then join the Lik Chom cooperative.

Lik Chom is also looking to fund a program to reintroduce harvesting, spinning and weaving with locally grown, naturally-colored cotton to several affected communities. There are no Mayan weaving cooperatives in Guatemala today that grow, weave and export textiles made exclusively from their own cotton. AP and ADIVIMA hope to change that with Lik Chom and your support.