PANELISTS
PANELISTS
LARA FRAYRE
Lara is a 27-year-old Social Entrepreneur , Designer , and Eternal Optimist . She is the Founder of Batak Craft helping the Vanishing Batak Tribe of the Philippines survive and thrive in the modern economy . She lives in Quezon City , Philippines .
GLADYS LLANES
Gladys is the co-founder of diinsider and the executive director of Chnage Magazine . She also works ful-time as a documentay filmmaker / editor , doing films for social justice , and is based in Manila , Philippines .
Gladys : How did Batak Craft started ?
Lara : Batak Craft started when I went to Palawan [ Philippines ] to volunteer for a construction project of a yoga center . A few of our workers are Batak , an indigenous group in Palawan , and that ’ s when I met them . I took notice of them because of all the workers we had they were the hardest working , the most honest , and the toughest workers .
Then , I made good friends with them and I started doing research about their tribe and that ’ s when I realized that they were actually a vanishing tribe . An anthropological research dictates that they ’ re technically going extinct because their population has decreased . And so it all started from there when I knew that they were vanishing and I knew I had to help . They made baskets and mats already and so with my industrial design and visual design background I was able to help them create a brand .
Gladys : What strike you during your immersion that let you know immediately that you can help this tribe ?
Lara : The craft was already in place . They already made baskets and crafts with patterns . It is basically inspired by nature , from the rice fields , seas , some others are like snakes , that been theirs all along .
I think my contribution was just to improve it and connect them to the international market who definitely respect enough the craft to pay the right price for it .
One of the challenges they have was when they sell their crafts to local markets , they were always asked for the cheapest price and sometimes the market buyers won ’ t even pay them unless the product were sold to the costumers . It was very unsustainable for the Batak . What strike them as very special is that they already had the skill , they already had a rich heritage . The danger was losing it to urbanization or modernization .
Photo by : Lara Frayre
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