I’m currently in Tabuk, Kalinga as part of Masda Aw, a cultural exchange between Kalinga weavers and Manila creatives.

The province of Kalinga is associated with its rich weaving tradition. But not many know that one of the province’s most distinctive industries was almost lost 30 years ago.

Florence Amily Ao-wat, known as Manang Astrid, owner of Kinwa Etnika Handicrafts (Kinwa) and founder of the Kalinga Indigenous Weavers Association, remembers it well.

Manang Astrid, who hails from Lubuagan, Kalinga, taught herself how to weave by observing her mother. Weaving helped her earn money when she had to stop studying at 11 after her father passed away. She later returned to school, graduating with a degree in commerce, majoring in accounting. She worked in various local and national government offices, where she learned the importance of linking producers to their target markets. In 1998, she found herself in her hometown on a business trip. “I saw that [weaving] was a dying industry. There were no weavers because they're all old,” she said. “I [thought] how bad it would be if the industry died, so I went back to weaving.”

This wasn’t a rash decision. Manang Astrid knew that Kalinga had a robust market for its own weaves, so she had a sure market. In 2008, she bought products from weavers in Lubuagan and, with the help of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), sold them in trade fairs in Manila. “It was all sold there. I was very happy.”

She needed a name for her business if she wanted to continue joining trade fairs. She chose Kinwa, which means “to create,” in honor of the people who create the weaves. Coincidentally, it’s also the acronym of their weaving association, even though they are separate entities.

She ventured into loom weaving in 2017 after Typhoon Lawin wreaked havoc on the province. “After the calamity, here comes the blessing,” Manang Astrid said.

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) was working on its Cagayan Valley transmission line and asked the DTI about organizations it could assist. The DTI recommended Kinwa. “I was thinking of going to loom weaving, so [I said], ‘How about you train us in loom weaving? After one month, they brought 10 loom frames.”

Part of Manang Astrid’s success is her willingness to work with local culture instead of against it. Her first 10 weavers were women, and because she understood that Kalinga women were expected to put family responsibilities above everything else, she suggested that her weavers bring their loom frames home and work from there.

“They have to care for the children, they have to wash, they have to cook, so they come only maybe two hours a day… So I told them to bring their loom frames home,” Manang Astrid said. “It's easier for me to go around and give them [our] orders.”

She also commissioned local furniture makers to make loom frames, encouraging them to use local wood that was cheaper but also sturdier, thus removing the need to rely on donations. The NGCP later trained them in sewing, which they incorporated into their product offerings.

Kinwa also employs PWDs. This began when she was approached by a Catholic organization looking for possible employment opportunities for graduates of a local school for deaf mutes. “We started teaching them how to weave. They were skilled and very teachable. One of them is [now] my trainer… Two of them help their parents in building their houses.”

Like many weaving enterprises in the country, Kinwa currently uses polyester cotton, but is hoping to transition to natural fibers and dyes, even planting its own cotton. This is where Masda Aw comes in, as a huge part of it involves university professor and natural dye artist Diana Katigbak instructing the weavers on the natural dyeing process used on cotton fiber sourced from the Philippine Textile Research Institute (PTRI). It’s not an easy process, but Manang Astrid is excited for the opportunities this could open.

“My neighbors are very excited… Everyone wants to [plant] cotton,” she shared. “I want to [grow] my own cotton because whenever we go to Manila, they always say, ‘What are your materials? Did you buy or produce them?’ I told myself, if we produce [our own fiber], the money will not go to anybody. It's still in the community. That's how I got the idea for making [our] own cotton industry.”

A cotton industry would mean more jobs for farmers as well as weavers. In this case, the hope is that the demand for naturally dyed cotton textiles will spur the demand for local cotton farms. “Maybe [the dyeing] comes first, so that when I plant, I will be ready with the skills to [produce handicrafts from it],” Manang Astrid said.