I first came to learn about the banig weavers of Basey, Samar many moons ago when, on a pre-Yolanda morning, I explored the entirety of the San Juanico Bridge on foot. I had arrived in Samar with no destination in mind until a local I encountered pointed me to a fascinating place. “You can go to Basey; it is a small town not far from here. There’s an old church there and a cave where you will see women weavers making beautiful banig,” he told me in Tagalog.
Woven PH: Weaving Change in the Lives of Women Artisans of Basey, Samar
"Banig" was a handwoven mat made from dried seagrass leaves, used primarily for sleeping and sitting in most Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines. The word “banig” instantly piqued my interest. It brought back childhood memories of my grandmother’s house, where we used to sleep on one. After learning that the local who approached me was a habal-habal driver, I immediately hopped onto the back of his motorcycle and rode off to the town of Basey.
The Banig Weavers of Basey
Most of the women weavers of Basey converged every morning inside Saob Cave—which was located a few meters away from the side of a highway. “We prefer weaving inside this cave because the cool temperature is conducive to keeping the tikog grass (the banig’s main raw material) soft and bendable,” a weaver explained to me in Tagalog. The habal-habal driver asked one of the weavers how much they earned. The woman answered that they took home an average of one hundred fifty pesos or less every week. My heart sank.
Little did I know that three years after Typhoon Yolanda struck the Visayas in 2013, a social enterprise called Woven PH would be established with the aim of ensuring fair benefits to the women weavers and uplifting the banig weaving industry of Basey.
Enter Woven PH
Woven PH was founded by John Francia and Trish Lim in 2016, but the idea for a social enterprise came even before that. In 2014, the two worked together on an area development study focusing on Basey, Samar, for ABS-CBN's Lingkod Kapamilya, headed by the late Gina Lopez. Compelled to do more, Francia immersed himself in the community for almost a year—taking advantage of the Jesuit Volunteer Program by requesting to be assigned to Basey.
During that period, Francia and Lim were able to organize a group of women weavers, which they called "community craft associations," as well as create product development modules to better market the banig woven products of Basey.
The long-standing mission of Woven PH was to continue pouring economic benefits into the local communities of Basey—through its weaving and embroidery industry—and help artisan weavers earn more. “As a social enterprise, we don’t just buy and sell; we design for the community. We don’t just provide employment and market access to weavers; we rig the industry in their favor,” stated Woven PH.
“For years and years, there has been an inequitable distribution in the industry, thus limiting the price of the weavers’ creations to a very unfair amount. This inequality has contributed to the art of weaving becoming a dying craft. With Woven, we wanted to show them the real value of their craft and at the same time keep it alive,” Woven Co-Founder and CEO Trish Lim said.
From earning a measly six hundred pesos per month before, the more than forty banig weavers of Basey organized by Woven PH now earned more than double that amount.
“Right now, we are trying to raise their earnings to 4,000 to 5,000 a month as we try to balance it with the market focusing on promotion, product development, and looking for buyers and artists who want to collaborate. We also have a project called 'Woven on the Move,' where we bring weavers from Basey to Manila and take them to schools to impart their cultural heritage of weaving to kids,” Lim added.
Aside from rescuing the dying art of banig weaving, Woven PH had also come up with millennial-friendly banig-woven items. “Bags and wallets were already being sold as souvenirs for tourists. So, we came up with gadget sleeves first because millennials today are never without their phones, tablets, or laptops,” Lim said.
In a time when the banig was almost reduced to a nostalgic artifact of the past, it was refreshing to see the renaissance of banig creation being introduced to the current generation. Thanks to Woven PH, the banig weavers of Basey, Samar—apart from reaping fair benefits—were also finally given the right platform to showcase their beautiful craft.
Woven PH Community Profile
Photos by Woven PH
