Planning of Practical Workshops for Alto Perú

SOLAC decided to start practical workshops for the beneficiaries of the microfinance pilot project with the aim of giving the participants an opportunity to learn new skills that they may later use to start a new economic activity or to create an additional source of income (it is very common for micro entrepreneurs in Lima to have more than one small business).

We put together a list of six different options for the practical workshops according to what was more feasible to carry out in the community. The list of choices included: knitting and crochet, jewellery, yogurt, jam, pastry, and chocolate workshops. The members of each ASOL voted to decide the two workshops that we going to be implemented. The most popular choices were knitting and crochet, and the jewellery workshop. We contacted professional teachers for each workshop that were recommended to us by other NGOs, Vilma Acuña for knitting and Gloria Cabrera for jewellery, and we elaborated a six-week plan for each course. For the knitting and crochet workshop we decided, together with the teacher, that the course was going to take place twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays for three-hour sessions. The teacher explained to us that it was very important to have at least two sessions per week for the knitting and crochet workshop, as it is a very difficult skill to learn and requires a lot of practice at a basic level. For the jewellery workshop we decided to have a three-hour session per week on Sundays for six weeks. We also set a 5 PEN fee to sign-up for the course as a symbolic amount to ensure the commitment of people who decided to participate. The fee also included a set of materials for each participant for the course that they could take home to practice what they learnt in class. SOLAC decided to give priority for the signing-up to the workshop to the participants of the microfinance pilot project, then according to the vacancies in each course to the rest of the people of Alto Perú. The Head mistress of the local primary school, Nelli Villegas, agreed to let us use one of the classrooms of the school to carry out the workshops.