Rollins Faculty and Students to Assist Local Crafts Market in Ecuador

July 13, 2006

A family selling crafts sits in their booth in the Otavalo Market. (Photo: Les Lloyd)

Rollins Chief Information Officer Les Lloyd and Graduate Assistant Heather Smith traveled to Ecuador this past May in preparation for two fall classes, a Rollins College Conference (RCC) course and a Crummer International Practicum. Six students in the Crummer International Practicum will travel to Ecuador in October, and 28 students in the RCC course will also make the trip in December as an extension to the course.

“We chose Ecuador because of their needs, the relative security of the towns we were visiting and the desire to work with a Spanish-speaking country,” said Lloyd, who teaches the RCC course “Activism 101: Making a Difference Locally and Globally.”

The Otavalo Market (Photo: Les Lloyd)

The first stop on their trip was Otavalo, Ecuador, where they researched the Otavalo Market and met with the Union de Artesanos Indigenas del Mercardo Centenario de Otavalo (UNAIMCO). Founded in 1987, UNAIMCO works to protect the rights of the vendors that participate in the market, while making them active participants in the global market. They proposed the idea of having a group of Crummer students create a Web site for the market that would allow consumers outside of Ecuador to purchase artisan crafts from Otavalo. As a result, the newly-formed collaboration may have a lasting impact when it comes to increasing the quality of the goods at the market as well as the prosperity of the town. Visit http://web65.rollins.edu/~drobertson/ecuador/Ecuador/Home.html to view the online store for the Otavalo Market.

After the work was completed in Otavalo, Lloyd and Smith traveled to Cuenca where they met with Mateo Estrella Duran, a representative from the Department of Education. Duran is also the director of a secondary school in a very poor area. Lloyd made arrangements for his RCC class to travel back to the school in December to donate a dozen computers and also teach English and computer skills to the students.

A crafts sale will be held later this summer to help raise funds for the project.
Also, two classes will hold fundraisers in the fall (one of them will be a plant sale). For more information on these projects, contact Les Lloyd at llloyd@rollins.edu.