Reinvigorating Akha Culture and Empowering Young Women through Economic Opportunities
Through this project, we aim to revive traditional Akha embroidery by making it meaningful and viable for the next generation. We create opportunities for Akha girls and young women to learn, innovate, and earn income through embroidery that tells stories of identity, climate, and resilience. We aim to create a safe place to encounter women to share and bond. Embroidery is also a tool that we use to get women together to share their stories, listening, learning, and build connections within women in the community and ultimately bound.
In northern Laos, most women have only one way to earn income: cutting down forest to plant rubber trees. It’s hard work, and it’s not sustainable. Others collect non-timber forest products (NTFPs)—things like mushrooms, herbs, or honey—but it’s done in a way that exhausts the land. The forest doesn’t have time to recover. People don’t always know how to harvest in a way that lets it grow back.
ECOSYSTEM
So we started with listening.
Our entry point was creating a safe space, especially for Akha girls, aged 11 to 17. It’s not easy. In Akha culture, girls often can’t speak to outsiders, especially without a man present. Sometimes they’re not encouraged to speak at all. And the community itself is closed, isolated, slow to trust—even with Lao nationals.
So we started with listening. We created space for girls to share in their own language, without judgment.
We borrowed methods from women who’ve faced similar silence: the Tejedoras de Mampuján in Colombia, arpilleristas in Chile, Syrian refugees using embroidery to reclaim their voice. We used embroidery too—not just to create, but to communicate. Each stitch became a way to talk about our lives, our land, our fears, and our future.
As we stitched, we talked about forests. About the floods. About what happens when the trees don’t come back. We taught how to harvest NTFPs in a way that gives the land time to breathe. And we worked on connecting the crafts to local markets, so the girls could earn a bit of money and keep building their confidence.