Financial crisis and its effects on the handicraft sector in Metropolitan Lima

Abstract

When we hear the news about the international crisis and how macroeconomic variables begin to move in a negative direction. We do not fully understand how this impacts on people's lives and what are the effects it leaves on their ways of working and their daily lives. This paper seeks to describe and explain the impact that these external shocks can have on vulnerable sectors of the national economy, in this case the artisanal sector. In recent years, my work in FOVIDA, the development institution where I work, with artisans in Metropolitan Lima has meant a constant challenge to maintain their sales levels and preserve their activity as a source of income and important employment for their families. At the same time, it has also allowed me to confirm its inherent value as a cultural legacy and its ability to recreate itself, becoming a living element of our culture. This gives it the capacity to be a bridge between modernity and our history; and at the same time to become an integrating element in our present. That is why we believe it is valuable to be able to respond more assertively to the sector's demands and implement local, regional and national public policies that contribute to the protection, promotion and reproduction of handicrafts.