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Spanish Language Institute Of Intibuca (SLI)

Manos Agiles - Women Artisans de Yermaranguila

Spanish and Cross Cultural Experiences

Learn And Have Fun At The Same Time. It's Edutainment,  It's Baile Folklorico, Its Honduran Rancheros, It's Cultural Visits, Its Interacting With The Lenca Indians And Other Indigenous People. It Learning Through The Exciting, Unique Novella/Textbook, "The Passions Of Arboleña"

Women Artisans Of The Lenca Highlands

The Women Of Yermaragnuila have Agile Hands

Yermaranguila is an Indian community about 10 miles from La Esperanza.  Women here work very hard for very little pay.    The life of an Indian women is very hard in the villages and aldeas and that is why we are developing this artisan project.

These women of Manos Agiles are already working to produce pine straw crafts. The quality is very good and the products are authentic.   But the women have to walk miles to collect pine straw from the mountains.  The crafts they are producing take a very long time to produce and the local market is very low paying.  They make pine straw baskets in only one color and the market in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa is very expensive to reach. 

As part of SLI's support for Culture Experiential Tourism in developing countries, we are developing workshops to teach other crafts to the women.  Upon a visit to the leader of the group, Gloria, we talked about other crafts the women could produce. They wanted a craft that could be learned by all the women and that could use available resources.  Because there is such an abundance of bananas and the fact that the women have banana trees in their back yards, it was decided to begin a banana leaf crafts project.

A 6 hour workshop was held on Saturday February 4, 2006 to teach the women the basic skills of banana leaf craft. 5 women attended the workshop and at the end of the 6 hour workshop, the women each produced their own unique banana leaf articles.

About Gloria, the leader of the Group

Gloria is an experienced artisan. She is an excellent leader. For many years she made quilts,  made items of crochet, made woodcrafts and made silk flowers. But Yermaranguila is out of the way and there was little or no market for these items in that area.. Three women from Nicaragua  came to Yermaraguila for a forest project.  They held a 15 day workshop  including field trips to the mountains.  There they collected pine straw and then the Nicaraguan women taught them to make pine straw baskets..  This was a part of MAFOR a project of CODEFOR which has now ended.  

Gloria loved making the pine needle crafts.  She has spent four years making articles of pine needles, baskets of many sizes. 

Gloria was the person who chose four women to bring to the workshop.  She showed up the Saturday morning after I talked with her with four women all wanting to be trained in making articles of banana leaves.  They brought the banana leaves with them, ranging in color from beige to black.  They came ready to work because Gloria had prepared them for a day of learning.

A second workshop on design was held on February 18, 2006  to teach good design principles.

Gloria is the kind of artisan we were looking for.  She is extremely careful, detail oriented and supervised the other women at the same time she created the banana leaf article pictured above.  All the handicrafts produced by Manos Agiles will be under the supervision of Gloria.

The Crafts Of Manos Agiles

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