“Mulheres do Vale - Fiando o Algodão” (Women of the Valley - Spinning Cotton, MdV II) was an educational programme born from the partnership between the Associação Agropecuária do Calhau e Madeiral – AAPCM and the independent collective Neve Insular (ni). The activity aimed to train a group of women living in the Ribeira de Calhau and Madeiral Valley in craft skills and technologies for processing cotton fibre in the context of its cultivation.
Investing in the training of the Mulheres do Vale has contributed to a locally based circular economy, ensuring suitable raw material for creating art & design pieces committed to the community.
Sharing know-how is an integral part of the MdV’s activities, hence the value placed on contact with children and young people. In this context, the Educational Centre No. 20 Olinda R. Silva, Ribeira do Calhau, and its students from the 5th and 6th grades were fully open to learning about part of the Cotton Cycle, going through each of the stages that make up this circuit.
Mulheres do Vale thus became a space for dialogue based at the Madeiral Agroecological Centre and a means of spreading knowledge about the role cotton fibre has played in the history of Cabo Verde and in the construction of political and economic systems worldwide, as well as how it can be a source of local income.