Give the Gift of Loom

Help Artisans in Need

For weavers, a loom is their lifeline.

And for women in Assam, a loom is also a way to preserve their cultural heritage. 

Weaving has been a centuries old tradition in Kamrup region of Assam, with most rural households using looms to create textiles for personal use. It’s an intangible cultural heritage where weaving is perhaps one of the first forms of education a girl receives from her mother and at times the only piece of inheritance she receives from her family. As income through agriculture started to decrease, caused by constant floods and heavy rains eroding cultivable land, the precious skill of weaving became a means of livelihood and the loom became the tool for women artisans to earn supplemental income and support their families. 

To help these artisans make their craft practice viable in a contemporary market, Preserve Culture has partnered with Tata Trust’s Antaran project. Together we are trying to solve the structural issues facing the artisans. We believe that a systematic intervention can make artisans feel confident that their traditional craft has special value and in turn create an enabled community that learns modern methods to fuse with historically evolved craft knowledge. 

One such traditional craft is production of Eri Silk using humane ways,  also called the Ahimsa (or non-violent) silk. This is the only silk production method where the Silk Worm is not killed in the process. But the yield of silk is only 1/6th compared to other methods, making Eri-Silk fabric more costly to produce.

Artisans, mostly women, also have other challenges. They are extremely poor in most cases and they have to juggle fulfilling small orders and managing domestic work. They often have no money to buy raw material to create some stock or to even fulfill an order. The looms they use are old and with repeated wear and tears, the quality of fabric lacks quality to compete for a modern consumer. Productivity takes a hit also. Women have to sit in uncomfortable position for long hours just to produce one yard of fabric. 

We believe that with your help, we can help the women artisans from Kamrup climb out of their abject poverty by using the only skill they know which is to weave beautiful fabrics. 

We plan to help 50 (fifty) families in Kamrup region acquire a new loom that will improve productivity, improve quality and also improve health of women artisans because these are better designed. One handloom mill costs about $500, so we need about $25K to support 50 artisans. 

One such artisan is Ms. Renuka Kalita. She is from Nahira village in South Kamrup and an excellent designer. She wants to develop her business by learning modern skills. 

Minu Das is another Artisan Entrepreneur from Guimara village in South Kamrup. Her son who is very young recently met with a road accident and has been restricted to the house with both legs broken. He was delighted to be of help to his mother who has only received primary education, as her Business Manager. Minu looks forward to expanding her business by engaging more associate artisans.

There are many more stories similar to Renuka and Minu. We hope that you will help them achieve their livelihood by providing a gift of the loom which will go a long way in helping preserve the culture and tradition of silk weaving in Assam.

Preserve Culture is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and this means that your donations are tax deductible. You will get a receipt to claim your tax deduction. 100% of your contributions are used to directly benefit artists engaged in creating cultural artifacts