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About Us

The Chol-Chol Foundation is a non-profit Fair Trade organization, whose mission is to promote sustainable economic development for rural, Mapuche weavers and artisans from the Araucania region in Chile.

We do this through:

• Fair Trade Handicrafts: We act as a non-profit intermediary between the artisans and the market, in a process that seeks to provide a fair, stable income to weavers and artisans of Mapuche origin that would otherwise lose their cultural traditions and craft techniques. We actively contribute to the development and preservation of ancestral techniques of production. We market the products in national and international markets. We are members of the World Fair Trade Organization (IFAT-WFTO) and the Southern Fair Trade Network "SURES". We grant microcredits and technical assistance.


• Empowering Artisans: We strive to give artisans the skills to independently manage the productive and business system for their products. We do this by replicating a "joint productive and commercial management model". We advocate trade associations and self-management. We use a participative methodology of work and an integrative approach toward the personal and productive development of the artisans.


• Raising Awareness: We seek to promote and raise awareness about the plight of Mapuche artisans to increase the value of their craftmanship; the preservation of Mapuche culture and crafts techniques; and Fair Trade.

The Volunteer and Resource Development Programs actively support the above-mentioned areas of action.

The people are important: We differentiate ourselves by having an active Board of Directors, an effective volunteer team and engaged partners, all of which give our organisation the stability, transparency and independence necessary for out work. Our comparative advantage is the use of a participative methodology of work and an integrative approach towards the personal and productive development of the Mapuche people of the Araucanía.

We focus our work in the Araucanía region, located approximately 700 km south of Santiago, the capital of Chile. A great part of the Mapuche population live in this area. In fact, it is the largest indigenous settlement of the country. Araucanía is also an important tourist attraction thanks to its pristine natural beauty; it contains four national parks, five volcanoes and countless beautiful rivers and lakes. The main productive activities of the region are agriculture and forestry. The climate is relatively temperate, with a humid winter and a warm summer. The capital of the region is the city of Temuco, a modern city of approximately 300,000 inhabitants.