Another South-South story. In Fast Company Mona Gable reports on the work of the late Sarah Akot, a craft educator who taught in the Galapagos:
Sarah Akot, a Ugandan paper beadmaker, visited the Galapagos in 2011 and left a creative legacy for local craftspeople.
photo by Mona Gable
In April 2011, Lindblad teamed with Paper to Pearls, a microenterprise project for disadvantaged women, and brought Sarah Akot, a Ugandan paper beadmaker, to the Galapagos. As the head of a women’s beading cooperative in a refugee camp, Akot had never left northern Uganda, much less traipsed across the seas to a chain of volcanic islands straddling the Equator. After she arrived, she called a friend to report that the ocean was not only bigger than Uganda, but Africa, too.More here
Akot spent three days each on Santa Cruz and Isabela islands, teaching locals the art of paper beadmaking and assembling jewelry. Many of the community women were married to fishermen, and wanted to help support their families. Although the charismatic Ugandan teacher spoke English, most of her students didn’t. So training manuals were created in Spanish. The Artisan Fund also provided bundles of paper--calendars, magazines, posters from Lindblad’s fleet of ships--for rolling the beads. Using paper, scissors, rulers and glue, Akot showed them how to turn the beads into an item of high-quality jewelry. By the end of the workshop, the students had a piece of handmade jewelry to take home. But more than that, they’d experienced a cross-cultural exchange spanning art, conservation, and commerce. On Akot’s last day, the students gave her gifts, and she danced to a CD of traditional northern Ugandan music.
They never saw their mentor again. In early 2013, Akot died of unknown causes in a hospital in Uganda. Yet, her legacy in Galapagos lives on. You can find recycled paper jewelry in nearly 60% of the shops on Santa Cruz and Isabela. More than a dozen local women are making an income selling their jewelry, including at two galleries devoted to recycled handcrafts and art on Lindblad’s ships. Last year the Endeavor, Islander and the Explorer generated $16,000 in sales of paper jewelry from travelers--a percentage of which is recycled into the Artisan Fund for artists.
