Mama Ursula
shop > mama ursula productsMama Ursula lives and works in Lima, where she is committed to keeping alive the traditional craft skills she learned from her family in a remote mountain area of Peru. With the help of Just Trade, she leads a project that improves the lives of local women by providing them with skilled work and a living wage. Their Cosy Cotton Baby Range of hats and booties are about the cutest things imaginable. All made with beautifully soft, certified Fair Trade, organic cotton, naturally.
One of the founding members of the shantytown community Luis Felipe de la Casas, Mama Ursula has made ends meet for twenty years by cooking delicious food on her market stall. Using generations-old Peruvian techniques learned from her aunt, Mama Ursula took up weaving as a way of making a sustainable income. She remains a much loved and respected character in the neighbourhood and is well known, despite her own hardship, for her incredible generosity.
Just Trade works with Mama Ursula to develop her work for the western market, giving her the information she needs to adapt her traditional skills to produce functional, yet original items. The hand-woven jute and hemp belts she creates are long-standing staples of the Just Trade range.
The money she has earned making the belts has enabled Mama Ursula to pay for an urgent operation, make improvements to her home, and invest in new equipment for her market stall business. Keen to pass on the opportunity of fairly paid work to her friends and neighbours, she is teaching them the techniques and design skills she has learned, and thanks to her enterprising efforts, the Mama Ursula project now provides a living wage to eight local women. With the help of Just Trade, have developed the Cosy Cotton Baby Range.
"It is important to me that the skills that have been passed down through my family are kept alive, and are helping improve conditions for my community here in Lima," says Mama Ursula. "Just Trade provides us with a route to market for our wares, so that we can support for our families and make provision for our old age."
One of the founding members of the shantytown community Luis Felipe de la Casas, Mama Ursula has made ends meet for twenty years by cooking delicious food on her market stall. Using generations-old Peruvian techniques learned from her aunt, Mama Ursula took up weaving as a way of making a sustainable income. She remains a much loved and respected character in the neighbourhood and is well known, despite her own hardship, for her incredible generosity.
Just Trade works with Mama Ursula to develop her work for the western market, giving her the information she needs to adapt her traditional skills to produce functional, yet original items. The hand-woven jute and hemp belts she creates are long-standing staples of the Just Trade range.
The money she has earned making the belts has enabled Mama Ursula to pay for an urgent operation, make improvements to her home, and invest in new equipment for her market stall business. Keen to pass on the opportunity of fairly paid work to her friends and neighbours, she is teaching them the techniques and design skills she has learned, and thanks to her enterprising efforts, the Mama Ursula project now provides a living wage to eight local women. With the help of Just Trade, have developed the Cosy Cotton Baby Range.
"It is important to me that the skills that have been passed down through my family are kept alive, and are helping improve conditions for my community here in Lima," says Mama Ursula. "Just Trade provides us with a route to market for our wares, so that we can support for our families and make provision for our old age."
