OUR IMPACT: WORKSHOP REPORTS

GreenWood maintains a network of dedicated and highly qualified artisan mentors—expert practitioners and instructors in a variety of woodworking disciplines. Our world-class artisan mentors conduct training workshops in everything from sawmill installation and lumber grading to chairmaking, bowl turning, pen making and boatbuilding.

Before launching any workshop, a field scoping visit and a careful analysis is usually required. GreenWood staff work closely with local NGO affiliates to identify client community(ies) and artisans and to establish a production focus for the proposed training. A budget is drafted and GreenWood often collaborates with local communities or their NGO partners to raise the funds required for the workshop program, as well as to provide essential follow-up support for further training, quality control and product marketing.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road!
GreenWood has trained hundreds of artisans over the years, and their responses tell it best. In August 2003 GreenWood artisan mentors and a team of 17 students built two 30-foot, flat-bottomed riverboats (pipantes, in the local parlance) in a three-week workshop in Copén, Honduras. Copén is an isolated forest community located in the buffer zone of the 1.3-million-acre Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve.

Here’s what boatbuilding workshop participants had to say:

“It was the best workshop we ever had. I never saw so much enthusiasm. The number of participants actually grew as the days passed—the opposite of what usually happens…The best thing about this kind of pipante is its stability in the water. Having a flat, large bottom, it doesn’t swing in the water. Even more, it doesn’t go down when loaded, allowing us to use it even when the water level in the river is low.”
—German Oliva Herrera, President of the Sociedad Colectiva Romero Barahona (sawyer’s collective)

“What I liked most was the timber economy (“economia de la madera”). In the traditional way, using one big tree, we can make only one [dugout] pipante or cayuco. Now, with that same tree, we can make a dozen or more!...People have learned new skills and we may be able to generate new income by building and selling boats.”
—Antonio Romero

“After this workshop, we are perfectly able to make our own pipante, with the exact same quality of the one built with the instructors.”
—Leonidas Santos

 

CHECK OUT SOME OF OUR DETAILED WORKSHOP REPORTS, by clicking on these downloadable PDF files:

Peru Chair Workshops: Year I [PDF] (December 2008)

Cayuco Workshop: Honduras [PDF] (September 2004)

Pipante Workshop: Honduras [PDF] (July 2003)

Bowl Turning & Tool-Making Workshop: Honduras [PDF] (May 2003)