Condor y Aguila (Condor and Eagle) is an aspiring organization facilitating cultural and technical exchange between the community of Ayllu Tiqsimuyu in Nariño Department, Colombia, and local tradespeople and artists based in Worcester, Massachusetts. We are hoping to raise twenty thousand dollars for our initial project to co-create a metal fabrication shop located at Ayllu Tiqsimuyu. The shop will support community abundance, stability, and expansion, and alleviate current economic and resource hardships, by enabling local craftsmen to create agricultural and construction tools, both for the needs of the community, and to generate independent income. Our overarching goal is to facilitate the larger mission of Ayllu Tiqsimuyu, which is to effect profound personal and social transformation in Colombia and in communities across the world, through mentorship and training in the context of indigenous ceremonial traditions.

Ayllu Tiqsimuyo (pronounced: eye you dixie moo you) sits on approximately 24 acres in the shadow of the Andean volcano historically known as Urcunina by local indigenous people. The nearest city is the departmental capital of Pasto. High Andean mountain lakes in the area serve as the birthplace of the Amazon river, and in the period prior to the arrival of Europeans, river access made the region ideal as a meeting place for indigenous nations to gather, exchange knowledge, and information. Currently, Ayllu Tiqsimuyu continues this ancient tradition, offering a point of cultural exchange where students and elders of diverse indigenous lineages gather for ceremony, exchange, and dialog. As part of their broader project to promote healing and foster healthier ways of being and acting in the community, they also provide mentorship to people from throughout Colombia and from countries throughout the world.

The main barrier faced by Ayllu Tiqsimuyu is that it supports itself and the land it sits on largely from personal donations. In this inherently insecure and dependent situation, the community struggles to meet its expenses, between food, housing, and meeting the day-to-day requirements of a small community there is little money left for establishing the systems necessary for financial self-sufficiency. Another challenge is that community members cannot access quality metal hand tools, which are necessary for life in an area dependent on small mountain farming in a region where many trees and shrubs are hardwoods. The quality of tools needed to maintain and eventually expand the community, as well as for facilitating future permaculture projects and environmentally sustainable living solutions, are either not available in Southern Colombia or are utterly financially out of reach.

After sitting with the leadership of Ayllu Tiqsimuyu and speaking at length about the challenges of implementing their community projects as well as advancing their larger mission in a region of Colombia that has been chronically neglected by the national and local governments, it struck those of us from the Global North that our home communities, already include individuals skilled in metal fabrication, workshop design, and training. Together with Ayllu Tiqsimuyu leaders, we realized we could establish a forge and metal fabrication facility at Ayllu Tiqsimuyu with which community members could create tools both for community use and for sale at locally affordable prices, thus addressing both the problems of economic independence and tool access at once.

The funds we raise will pay for two metal fabricators and a guide, as well as initial fabrication equipment, to travel from Worcester, MA to Ayllu Tiqsimuyu, and work with community members to set up a metal fabrication facility, for the production of high-quality agricultural and construction tools, not currently available in that area of Colombia. The group will live on-site and provide fabrication training, as well as take part in the work of building the facilities. They will also participate in community life and receive some of the ceremonial and social training offered at Ayllu Tiqsimuyu, with the goal of returning to Worcester both healthier and with a greater capacity for interdependence, as well as a deepened appreciation of the traditions that the workshop project will support. Our initial goal, which is the focus of this fundraiser, is to establish a simple working forge early in 2023. Our longer-term goal is for this project to establish the foundation of a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support for food security and financial independence to communities holding indigenous wisdom throughout Southern Colombia.

Those of us who have formed the Condor y Aguila organization in partnership with the leadership of Ayllu Tiqsimuyu have benefited from their mentorship and training, which has had a deeply transformative and healing effect on our lives and ways of being, as well, we hope, on the life of our communities and the broader world. In gratitude, we wish to support the Ayllu Tiqsimuyu community in their vision, by helping to foster their economic independence, abundance, and well-being. We invite you, through your generous donation, to join us in contributing to the vitality of this community, in their mission of creating healthier communities throughout the Global South and North, connecting and uplifting socially-wise relations of mind, heart, environment, and community.