Calgarians changing world one sweater at a time
Co-op created by women in Calgary and Bolivia brings hand-knit sweaters to Western Canada
The work was so beautiful, but they were just putting them on the dirt and washing them in the creek. They had no place to work or to sell them.
Doreen Kot
A dramatic pink, black and grey wrap. An intense blue sweater-jacket. A fluffy scarf, the colour of summer clouds. Trendy slouchy toques in all kinds of cool hues: olive green, jade, black, pink, blue, grey. A black cowl-neck poncho that looks like it’s straight off a New York fashion runway.
Heaped in sweaters and wraps of every colour and style, Ellis Bartkiewicz’s dining room table in Northwest Calgary looks like a fashionista’s dream.
But, she explains, these items are a link between fashion and the developing world. They’re Minkha Hand Knit Sweaters, a fair-trade fashion co-operative created by a group of women in Calgary and Bolivia.
Calgarians can buy Minkha products May 29 and 30 at the Parkdale United Church. Sweaters for men and women start at about $225 and are available in a range of colours, sizes and styles, in alpaca or cotton yarns. Toques and shawl-style scarves start at about $40. Custom sweaters can be ordered in any size and colour.
Minkha started in 1992, when Doreen Kot and her husband, Michael, travelled to Bolivia with a friend, Kathleen Gleeson. It was the Kots’ first trip to the small South American country and Doreen remembers being overwhelmed by the poverty.
“These people were just desperate. They had dengue fever and parasites and cholera,” she says.
“They had nothing and they needed everything.”
They stopped to talk to a group of women knitting on the ground in Cochabamba, a city in central Bolivia.
“The work was so beautiful, but they were just putting them on the dirt and washing them in the creek,” Kot recalls.
“They had no place to work or to sell them.”
The Kots and Gleeson bought all seven sweaters the women had on hand and by the end of the trip, they had rented a house for the women to work, and they promised to stay in touch.
Minkha was born. The name means “women working together” in the indigenous Quechua language.
Within a few years of returning to Calgary, Gleeson and Kot convinced several friends — including Bartkiewicz and Pat Hatfield — to get involved. They began importing the sweaters and set up their first sale at the Parkdale United Church. Then another. And another.
They’re changing faraway lives, one sweater at a time. Everyone in Canada working on the project is volunteer; 100 per cent of the proceeds go to Bolivia via Save the Children, which handles the banking to get the money directly to the families who belong to the co-operative.
About 45 Bolivian families are part of the co-operative and benefit from the sales, including access to health care and schooling. Multiple generations are now part of the co-op, and some of the children are in college — something that would have been just a dream two decades ago.
“We have done our best to try to ensure every step is as sustainable and fair trade as possible,” says Bartkiewicz.
Minkha now has sales in Edmonton, as well as Cranbrook and Oyama, B.C.
Yet, despite Minkha’s obvious success, the Calgary volunteers are modest when they talk about their accomplishments.
Says Kot: “We were just trying to do what we needed to do.”