Kalinga group hopes using natural dyes will lead to local cotton industry

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

- YVETTE TAN

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.”