Studio Assistant at Slow-Fashion social enterprise working with indigenous Quechua women

ABOUT AWAMAKI

Awamaki is a community-driven social enterprise working in deep collaboration with Quechua artisans. Together we create grassroots programs to support and grow women-led cooperatives through heritage textiles, market access, and sustainable tourism.

Our slow-fashion social enterprise working with indigenous Quechua women in the Peruvian Andes is seeking a creative individual to assist with the creation of beautiful, bespoke accessories. This is an excellent opportunity to gain practical design experience working in the studio with leather and hand woven textiles.

Daily projects will include:

• ironing (industrial iron skills preferred)
• interfacing
• cutting out patterns
• sewing (industrial machine)
• sewing leather (preferred)
• surging
• Spanish appreciated but not mandatory

This position plays an important creative role at Awamaki. Work with indigenous artisans supporting our collaborative design process, bring new product ideas to lie, and support our team's constant efforts at quality improvement. In this role, you may coordinate between our designer and artisans, adapt Andean designs to contemporary styles, offer workshops in new techniques to the artisans, travel to Cusco to select new colors or improved materials, assist in merchandise planning and bring new product ideas to life. There is also opportunity to support our online sales, brick and mortar retail store management, and social media presence. There is room to adapt the role to your interests, and help in other areas of Awamaki's work.

Other Design and Production roles include the opportunity to:

• Work with colleagues to bring new product ideas to life using handknitting, backstrap loom weaving, natural dyes, and other techniques.
• Create trend boards, client profiles, and market research for new products
• Find uses for and create new products from leftover materials to achieve our zero-waste goals
• Introduce new techniques to our artisan partners according to your own skills. Past examples include crochet and felting.
• Assist with store merchandising and design ideas for different retail channels
• Collaborate with our design team to launch our yearly wholesale collection, assisting with color selection, sampling, photo shoots, and the creation of line sheets and tech packs
• Experiment with nontraditional materials and developing new products alongside the artisans
• Learn about climate-threatened materials in the Andes and experiment with replacement materials
• With our team, develop ideas for new products that use climate-resistant materials, or help select from existing ideas
• Support product development with market research
• With the artisans, create and refine samples to test new items in our brick-and-mortar store in Peru, and also in our online store
• Work a minimum of 6 – 9 hours per week at Awamaki's fair trade store in Ollantaytambo (required of all staff and volunteers)
• Take pictures to share on Awamaki's social platforms (required of all staff and volunteers)

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

An ideal candidate for this position would possess the following qualities:

• Have significant experience working in design and production
• Spanish and English proficiency strongly preferred

Room and board assistance, and complete fee waiver, available for volunteers who stay six months or longer.