How are glaciers and alpacas impacting the work of these Peruvian artisans?

When you spot an alpaca grazing on wild grass in Peru’s mountainous Sacred Valley, you’re not just seeing high Andes wildlife in its natural habitat—you’re also catching a glimpse of one of the most important players in local Quechua economies. 

It’s a tidy circle. The region’s glaciers water the grass, which feeds the alpacas who provide wool. Local women use this wool to make knitted toys and woven shawls that travelers buy as mementos. This moves money directly into the hands of community members whose incomes feed households. 

Take away any one of these elements and it will upend the delicate balance. But add in climate change, and the fabric unravels faster than the glaciers are melting—which is happening way too fast. With less water available and less grass growing, it’s becoming harder, and less sustainable, to raise alpacas for wool. 

But there is hope. Awamaki, a grassroots nonprofit focused on fair trade that supports women artisans throughout Sacred Valley, is experimenting with raw materials and innovative techniques aimed to help traditional artisans adapt to both climate change and market shifts. And stay economically viable for generations to come.

For now, fine alpaca wool is still the fiber of choice, but Awamaki wants to help its artisans prepare for an uncertain future in which it may be scarce or less practical to produce. 

“Even though we’ve always been really focused on traditional materials and methods, really fine alpaca fiber may not be the most climate-resilient, sustainable material going forward,” says Kennedy Leavens, founder and executive director of Awamaki. As a result, Awamaki is investing time and effort into exploring naturally-dyed, hand-spun craft yarn. 

As a partner of The Intrepid Foundation—Intrepid Travel’s charity arm—Awamaki was recently awarded a USD$9,281 (AUD$14, 356) Impact Grant which the nonprofit will use to develop a process and strategy to produce skeins of naturally-dyed craft yarn to sell online to hobbyists and wholesalers around the world. The grant will pay for supplies, an intern to help with the experimentation, and stipends for artisans, among other things.

“We have been impressed at how they are continually innovating the products they use… They are proactively responding to threats from climate change on their products and market demand for natural and sustainable products.”

- Biheng Zhang, general manager, The Intrepid Foundation

While sales of handcrafted products decreased during the pandemic, there was an uptick in demand for craft yarn—something Awamaki hasn’t previously sold. While alpaca is a specific category of wool, craft yarn is a broad term for blending different fibers. According to Leavens, it’s difficult to produce consistent, export-quality craft yarn by hand, especially when the artisans are making it by hand using a traditional drop spindle called a puska. Consistency, however, is crucial when selling yarn as a supply.

“Before, our artisans would spin some yarn, knitters would make products in the right sizes, and that was fine,” says Leavens. “Sometimes, the hat that they knit was 200 grams and sometimes it weighed 150 grams and that wasn’t really a big deal. But when you buy yarn as a knitter, you really need to know the weight of the yarn, the thickness of the yarn, and the length of the yarn.”

That’s hard to do when a number of individual artisans are all trying to make the same yarn weight, and that’s not even taking into account the natural variations in plant-based dyes, like those made from local flowers. But the Awamaki team are working on it, and Leavens is hopeful they’ll find a solution to producing yarn at a scale that can strengthen and diversify the revenue streams for their artisans.

Awamaki is one of 16 Impact Grant recipients this year, and it’s the third time the organization has proposed a winning idea. The grants are funded largely by an optional donation from Intrepid travelers, who elected to donate an extra one per cent to their trip cost to The Intrepid Foundation. 

According to Biheng Zhang, general manager of The Intrepid Foundation, Awamaki has long been a valuable and inspiring partner. “We have been impressed at how they are continually innovating the products they use, the training they give artisans to support them to use new products, and how they market their products,” says Zhang. “They are proactively responding to threats from climate change on their products and market demand for natural and sustainable products.”

Among many other initiatives, funding from a previous Impact Grant went towards hiring an artisan to teach others in the collective how to crochet a stuffed llama toy that was always on back order. 

“Part of it was just teaching them the stitches they needed to know to make harder patterns, and make more money from the products that we were ordering,” Leavens says. “By the end of that year, we were ordering so much more from them than we had before. That was a really tangible, immediate impact.”

Outside of the grant funding, Awamaki also receives ongoing ‘untied’ donations from The Intrepid Foundation. This means the funds can be used at the receivers’ total discretion. For Awamaki, this money has supported invaluable intern and staff positions, which can be challenging to fund otherwise. 

“So many funders don’t want to fund people,” Leavens says. “But the people are the ones doing the work and making the impact. 

Flexibility on the part of the funder has also been key. Two years ago, when the organization couldn’t get yarn to make the coarse alpaca fiber products, they moved to upcycled products. “The Intrepid Foundation has been really flexible,” she says. “If we’d had a less flexible funder, we would have had to drive eight hours to buy a bunch of alpaca fiber, outside shearing season, and from someone who’s not in the community where we work, and do the proposed project that way. This way, it was still a really successful project.”

”Ideally you come, and you have a positive impact as a traveler. Then local people benefit and feel good about their economy, their culture, and the future of the place where they live.”

- Kennedy Leavens, founder, Awamaki

Beyond selling online, Awamaki also has a physical store and tourism hub in the historic Incan mountain town of Ollantaytambo. This town, just an hour from Cusco, provides a beautiful base for tourism experiences—which Awamaki also offers. 

Travelers can book tours with Quechan artisans through Intrepid Travel or directly with Awamaki. On any given trip, you might: Travel to a rural village for a traditional earth oven lunch of marinated chicken, sweet potatoes and aba beans cooked in hot stones underground; take an active Spanish or Quechua language class at the local market; or try your hand at weaving a bracelet with the help of one of the women artisans.

All of Awamaki’s tourism experiences are community-led and community-focused; a big part of the program is supporting local artisans to start and improve their own tourism offerings, whether it’s cooking or weaving. 

 ”Ideally you come, and you have a positive impact as a traveler,” says Leavens. “Then local people benefit and feel good about their economy, their culture, and the future of the place where they live.”

“The donations that Intrepid sends—that travelers choose to give—have gone a long way for us towards strengthening communities and infrastructure, so that we can host tourism in a way that’s responsible and beneficial for the community,” Leavens says. “We see it as a way to enable communities to get set up to where they need to be.”

While concern about climate change impacting the weight of alpaca fiber is just that—a concern that has not yet been fully realized—until then, Awamaki will be experimenting, planning, and preparing. They’ll be strengthening a business model that’s pretty much as old as time: Buying goods directly from those who made them, making every purchase count.

You can find out more about the 2025 grant recipients and even choose to make a small donation (with a big impact) for yourself via The Intrepid Foundation.

A note on partnership content:

Adventure.com acknowledges the complexity and challenges of travel in the context of our global climate crisis. This article is part of Adventure.com’s paid partnerships program, which enables us to continue publishing stories about a more regenerative and sustainable future of travel by helping to make out platform commercially viable. Adventure.com only partners with brands and products that align with our ethical and editorial standards, and our vision for a future of travel built around lower emissions, deeper connection and more resilient communities.