​Guests indulged in a gorgeous, candlelit, three-course meal, enjoyed some fabulous live Jazz, and won some amazing prizes (a         holiday in Barbados, a family photography shoot, a luxury facial and all sorts of other goodies). It was an unforgettable night and we raised over £6500 through the event!  (You can order your photos of the night here.)

Every time a big cardboard box from Peru is delivered to the Craft Aid office, it feels like Christmas! It's always exciting to see all the new high-quality craft products that our differently-able artisans in Arequipa have been making. These vibrant cushions made from traditional Peruvian fabric are some of our newest arrivals.

​They’ve already been very popular at craft fairs and stalls. We’ve even been… 

​In July, we had the amazing opportunity to have a stall at Plaza Latina, “London’s best Latin American festival” with music, food, dance, art and kids activities. Our craft products may even be appearing in shops in Shoreditch soon, so keep your eyes peeled…

​We have so nearly raised the funds we need to buy the building in Arequipa, where we want to establish our craft centre. We have raised a huge amount of money in one year, and particularly over the last few months. ​We are so grateful to everyone who has given. To find out about our vision to employ more differently-able workers in Peru, watch the video.  

​This July, we ran a Craftival at Happygate, Harrogate’s new arts & music festival. This event raised money for three local charities, and we were blessed to be one of the benefiting charities! We had three bustling craft areas where visitors could learn how to produce beautiful marbled paper, make some seriously funky pom-poms, or even create their very own mosaic (if you missed the event, fear not! Watch Susie’s mosaic tutorial here.) Our disabled participants created a spectacular mosaic sign for the event, which drew a lot of attention. It was great to be able to show visitors some of the activities that we do at our therapeutic craft sessions and to share about our work with the Harrogate community.

It’s been a busy few months, and we’re excited about what’s ahead. Soon we’ll be waving off some new volunteers, who will be moving to work at our project in Peru, but more about that next time! 

It’s wonderful to be back in the Southern Hemisphere! To make me feel even more at home here in Arequipa, this time I’m staying with the wonderful family of Pastor Abel and his wife Betsaida. I’m here to see how our volunteer Ellie Thompson is getting on, and to escort her safely across the border to Bolivia and back so that she can renew her visa. When I left her here 3 months ago she barely had any Spanish, so it makes me *so* happy to see her chattering away with her host family like a native. She’s clearly perfectly at home and is being a huge blessing to the new craft project that Craft Aid is planting here.

​On my first full day here I was able to meet with all the young people from the larger Nuevas Fuerzas group that we’re working with. The world would describe this group as having ‘learning disabilities’, yet what they’ve learned in a short period is remarkable. They’re producing beautiful cards from Peruvian fabrics, and beads from recycled cereal boxes (hard to believe I know, but have a look at the finished result in the picture on the bottom left!) They were thrilled to bits to hear that all the cards they’ve sent to the UK so far have completely sold out, and they proudly told me that they’re selling well in Peru too. Christian, one of the group, stood up to make a welcome speech and said how pleased they were to be earning money from their work, which enabled them to buy the things they needed and help their families. It’s still very early days with this project, so it’s wonderful that those involved are already seeing the benefits. I told them that when they produce work that sells, two good things happen:
1) They get paid!
2) The world gets to see how talented and brilliant they are, and that’s just as important. It’s an opportunity for them to shine their light out all over the world, so people are able to see that God’s blessed them with talents and abilities just like everyone else.

Ella writes: After a whirlwind of a time in Peru, we arrived back in the UK a week ago. We returned to Lima for a day after leaving Arequipa to find a few more specific beads for the jewellery prototypes (such as the one in the photo above) that Ellie, Susie and Fiona had designed during the week. In Lima, we visited a silver jewellery shop, where the lady serving us asked Susie where her bracelet was from. It was one of the bracelets we had made in Arequipa with the group of people with learning disabilities. It was really encouraging to hear that there could be a market for such a product in Peru, especially from someone who is in the jewellery business herself. 

Since coming back to the UK, we've been working on a new Craft Aid film about the project in Peru, so keep a look out for this on our website (coming soon to a computer screen near you!) Whilst we were away, the craft sessions in Harrogate, Ripon and Leeds continued as usual, and some of our volunteers held an Easter stall, selling some of the crafts made in our sessions (I hear that fluffy chicks and chocolate were a feature.)

There is lots coming up for Craft Aid over the next few months, including an exhibition at a Christian youth event and our Summer Ball. (Head over to the events page and book your tickets!) Preparations are now getting underway!

Ella writes:

Sorry we’ve been a bit quiet on the blog-front recently – life has certainly not been quiet at Craft Aid over the last few weeks. Lots of exciting happenings….
 
On the 21st November, we held our first ever candle-lit concert with acclaimed vocalist and harpist Lucy Bunce. Glimmering tea-lights, angelic singing, heavenly harp music (pardon the cliché, but ‘heavenly’ does describe it well!) and a sparkly Peruvian jewellery display, along with other Craft Aid goods, made for a very beautiful evening. All this sophistication helped raise money towards the Peru project and awareness about the work of Craft Aid International. Susie also sang a few songs with Lucy. The music was so moving that at one point a whole row of the audience were in tears!

The following week was spent preparing for the Knitting and Stitching Show, which ran from Thursday to Sunday (26th-29th November). If you haven’t heard about it before, the show is not a theatrical production starring needles and thread… it is the biggest craft fair in Europe and we were very grateful to have a stand at this year’s show in Harrogate. It was an amazing experience.
 
Thousands of people came to Harrogate from all over the country especially for the show. Our volunteer Natasha (read a bit of her story here) did a brilliant job of helping prepare everything for the show and organised some exciting raffle prizes, including a signed book by British fashion icon, Zandra Rhodes. Differently-able participants from our Harrogate craft sessions helped behind the counter and worked on the stand, teaching the public how to make beautiful fabric flower corsages. Some participants volunteered at the stand every day, and even toured the show, giving out flyers and selling raffle tickets, which is a massive task in such an unbelievably huge venue. There were halls and halls of different craft stalls!
 
The Craft Aid products sold really well, and the other exhibitors were so helpful and supportive. We were even told our stall resembled Harrods! We also had several customers asking for advice about setting up craft sessions for differently-able people in various parts of the country. It is so encouraging to know that there are people all over the UK, who share CAI’s heart to empower people with disabilities, and who want to be trained and equipped to make this happen.

As well as a harp concert and the show, we have also had stalls at two Church Christmas fairs and Susie has been at several jewellery parties and given talks for different groups of people. Even as I write, she is travelling back from a weekend of events (including another concert, a jewellery party and various talks) in Cambridge. Meanwhile, the craft sessions continue to run, and the employees at the project in Peru have been busy keeping up with the large stock demands.
 
Just want to end this post by saying a huge huge thank you to everyone who has made all of these things possible. Sending you all lots of metaphorical gold stars from CAI! (sorry we’re not sending all our volunteers and supporters real star stickers…Maybe one day…)

After a day of orientating the team around Arequipa and collecting final bits of equipment and materials yesterday, we finally welcomed our first trainees today, who arrived with great excitement. We started with the physically disabled group in the morning, who're learning beadwork; and added the larger group of folk with learning disabilities in the afternoon who learnt how to make cards using die-cutting machines and local fabrics. Everyone was really keen to learn and we were really surprised at how quickly they all picked up the new skills. Within a few days they'll be experts! Despite our lack of Spanish, the warmth of the welcome and the affectionate enthusiasm of all the participants meant we were able to start building really lovely relationships with all the trainees very quickly.  There was a fab surprise for us at the end of the day; we were all enthusiastically entertained by Richard the Karaoke King and Laura (above) who performed a local dance for us all. We were even presented with hand-made chocolates which they'd made especially for us. It's been an extraordinary day, especially for the Leeds volunteers who've never experienced anything like it before. Grace - our youngest team member at 13, has been a total star and has made a lot of new friends, as have we all! ​