Knitting to improve lives in the historic Ifugao region of the Philippines, where farmers continue to cultivate rice by hand.
Training villagers to make high-quality products, which gives them income that can allow them to live sustainably on their ancestral land.
The Ifugao Rice Terraces were buitl more than a thousand years ago, and are threatened by erosion due to abandonment.
To maintain their way of life, villagers must find income in addition to rice cultivation to survive.
Ricefield also provides support for the sale and distribution of villagers' products, both int he Philippines and internationally.
The Ricefield Collective is a collaboration between knitting teachers and designers based in the U.S. and Europe, with indigenous people from the Ifugao region of the Philippines. Our goal is to use handknitting as a way of generating income for those in danger of being forced out of their ancestral land due to poverty. We're planning to launch a limited-edition knitwear collection in Fall 2013 made by the women we work with.
Jean is the general manager at Ricefield, and has spearheaded much of its operations by recruiting, organizing, and training other members. She has been a farmer all her life, first in the neighboring village of Hapao where she was born, then in Uhaj where she married.
One of the busiest women we know, Juliet avidly knits while raising four children, working on her farm, and helping her husband run a bakery that delivers fresh bread to the people in the village. She gave birth to her fifth child shortly after this picture was taken, and was knitting less than 48 hours later!
Lena has a heart condition that makes it difficult for her to work in the fields, so knitting allows her to have income without too much stress on her body. She was born and raised in Ifugao, and has never spent a significant amount of time outside her hometown.
Our Quality Cotnrol Supervisor, Vivian comes to Ricefield Collective with an extensive crochet background, and has designed bags for sale in our shop in addition to knitting for us. She hails from Ifugao but lived in Baguio for many years, before returning to her husband’s ancestral farm in Ifugao and start a family.