Since we opened in January 2011, our two teachers have taught more than 75 Pile kids, 12 to 15 years old, how to weave by hand the impossibly fine straw hats for which their village is legendary – the most finely woven straw hats in human history.

Two of our students, Katiusca Espinal and Christian López, won awards for Best Young Weaver of the Year while they were students.

A primary goal of the school is to keep the art alive by teaching and encouraging weavers who will continue to be weavers and will continue to weave fine Montecristi hats.

However, I also realize that there are much easier ways to earn a much better living, so most of our students will not make hat weaving their primary occupation. I hope some of them will continue to weave part time to add to their family income.

Even if none if our “graduates” make hat weaving their full time occupation, the school still has great value to the students and to the community.

Our students learn how to cut the plants and make the paja toquilla to weave the hats that have been the central theme of Pile for more generations than anyone knows.

Our students feel with their own bent backs what it is to be a weaver of paja toquilla. They feel what so many generations of Pile weavers before them have felt, bent in half, weaving fine hats of paja toquilla.

Our students feel with their own struggling fingers what it is to lead the slender strands of paja toquilla through the intricate steps of the centuries-old dance the weavers of their village have taught it to perform so breathtakingly well.

Even if most of our students will not have full-time careers as weavers, even if they do not continue to weave part time ––– at least for the time they are our students, they have their hands on paja toquilla –– the paja toquilla that is the history, the heritage, the soul of their village.