Beyond the Back-Strap Loom: Building a Sustainable Future for Bagobo-Tagabawa Inabal Weavers

by Leila Rispens-Noel




While living in the Netherlands, I joined a group of diaspora leaders exploring how we could help alleviate poverty in our homelands. We all agreed that creating local jobs was key, but one question remained: How could we turn that idea into reality?

After almost 35 years abroad, I now spend my time in my hometown Bansalan, doing development work through WIMLER Philippines. This is the story of how I got involved with the Bagobo-Tagabawa women weavers.

A Chance Encounter

In April 2017, I visited a local logistics company to ship a package. In a corner, I noticed rolls of colorful abaca cloth. The manager informed me that they were Bagobo weaves. Although I had heard of traditional Bagobo abaca cloth, I hadn’t realized that indigenous artisans in our hometown were producing such vibrant designs.

After a 30-minute wait, the owner, Vivencia Mamites, rushed in. A Bagobo-Tagabawa weaver from Barangay Bitaug, she explained she needed to ship her inabal weaves to Manila but lacked the funds for shipping and had to borrow money. Her pride and passion for her craft were unmistakable.

I expressed interest in visiting her community to see their inabal weaving process. After saying goodbye, I racked my brain, figuring out how to help. Despite my passion, I had little funds. I posted a brief note about my meeting with Vicência on Facebook, unaware that this quick post would open doors  to a much larger journey.

Seeking Tribal Council of Elders’ Approval

A month later, I received a message from Jennifer “Jen” Ayok Fernandez, a Bagobo-Tagabawa working with the Bansalan Municipal Tribal Office. Jen had seen my post and invited me to a tribal council meeting the following morning to meet their chieftain and elders.

Armed with enthusiasm and my background in development work, I introduced to the Council the work of WIMLER Philippines. I explained it is a small NGO, but I was willing to help the weavers.

The elders asked direct questions: What are you planning to do? What can you offer? How will you do it?

Since WIMLER Philippines—the NGO I founded in 2006—had no structural funding, I could not promise funds. I needed to speak with the weavers first to understand their needs before making any plans.

The hardest question was: Why are you doing this?

I have been involved in development work since the early 1970s, and helping others brings deeper purpose and spiritual fulfillment to my life. For me, development work means empowering communities to unleash their inner strength and become self-sufficient. True success is achieved when a community no longer needs my assistance.

I recognized social entrepreneurship as a potential path to self-sustainability, reducing reliance on external grants, which are becoming harder to secure. Having retired to a simple life with my husband, I am ready to dedicate my time to building lasting community projects.

Life in Bitaug

Bitaug is a barangay in Bansalan, a town about 72 kilometers from Davao City, with a population of around 1,048 people (2024 POPCEN)—mostly from the Bagobo-Tagabawa tribe. Most residents earn a living through small-scale farming, daily farm labor (hurnal) paying around ₱200 a day, or operating passenger motorcycles popularly known as habal-habal.

In the village, around 15 women wove inabal as a source of income. Processing raw abaca and weaving a four-meter roll took four to five weeks, earning them roughly ₱2,000 to ₱2,500. While not enough to cover living costs, the women said, “it’s better than nothing.”

Jen and I visited Bitaug the day after the tribal meeting. Heavy rain from the night before made the unpaved roads muddy, forcing us to walk part of the way.

We visited the School of Living Traditions, where weavers trained under the late Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) awardee, Bae Salinta Monon (1920–2009). Known as “The Last Bagobo Weaver,” Monon brought national and international recognition to the art, even meeting former Presidents Fidel V. Ramos and Bill Clinton. Before her passing, a 2012 initiative by the Philippine Commission on Women helped safeguard the craft by training five primary weavers, including Vivencia and Salinta’s descendants.

Despite these achievements, inabal weaving was at risk of dying out among younger generations due to the lack of consistent markets.

The Inabal Production Process

Because orders from Manila are market-driven, the weavers endured long, lean months, leaving their economic situation largely unchanged. For this reason, many women preferred to work as daily farm wage earners.

Creating inabal requires immense physical labor and skill.

1. Harvesting: Raw abaca (kedungon) stems are gathered from private lots or neighboring barangays like Alegre, Makilala, or Sta. Cruz.
2. Extraction (Tuxying): Fibers are manually extracted from the leaf sheaths using hand-stripping techniques.
3. Processing & Dyeing: Fibers are pounded (bayo), air-dried for 24 hours, dyed, and hand-tied knot-by-knot into thread balls.
4. Weaving: Using a traditional back-strap loom, weavers spend up to four weeks crafting a single four-meter roll.

Building Strategic Partnerships

During my second visit to Bitaug, I met with the Tribal Women Weavers Association (TWWA). Led by Vivencia, TWWA had 25 members, including 15 active weavers. Their main hurdles were a lack of capital for raw materials, absent quality control due to working separately at home, and the absence of a dedicated weaving center.

I posted photos of their weaves on Facebook, and orders began coming in from supporters as far as Turkey, Hong Kong, and the United States. However, social media sales were unpredictable, and building a dedicated weaving center required funds I didn’t have.

Then came a series of breakthroughs:

• Government Support: Former Congresswoman Sitti Djalia Turabin-Hataman reached out, offering to help secure government funding for a weaving facility.
• Capacity Building: DTI sponsored a two-day organizational training workshop, helping TWWA define its vision, mission, and strategic goals.
• Seed Funding: Through my friend Robert Meins and the Rotary Club of Washington, D.C., we secured funding to purchase raw materials and pay weavers advanced labor fees.
• Design Collaborations: We partnered with fashion designer Wilson Limon of NiñoFranco, as well as local sewers in Bansalan, to design prototype products such as bags, t-shirts, and tangkulo scarves.

By September 26, 2018, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officially handed TWWA the keys to their newly constructed weaving center in Bitaug.

 

Scaling Up and Facing Realities

On November 23, 2018, during the town’s Tribal Day celebration in Bitaug, the Tribal Women Weavers Association (TWWA), the Council of Elders, and the local government formally inaugurated the TWWA Weaving Center.

The opening coincided with a major milestone: PrimeCredit Hong Kong placed an order for 20,000 inabal ID lanyards, which required 150 rolls of woven cloth. The Bitaug weavers produced 100 rolls, while we sourced the remaining 50 from Blaan and T’boli artisans in Kiblawan. Partnering with the AADR Arts and Crafts Center for assembly proved that cross-community collaboration among local social enterprises could truly work.

We shipped the orders just before a series of powerful earthquakes struck in 2019, damaging homes across Bitaug and Bansalan. The pandemic followed in 2020, completely halting gatherings at the center. Three years of isolation naturally took a toll on the association’s cohesion.

Although operations slowly resumed once restrictions lifted, the organization had grown fragile. Weaving continues today, but mostly from the artisans' homes. When PrimeCredit Hong Kong renewed its orders, weavers produced the cloth at home rather than at the center. Under this decentralized setup, we produced 15,000 passport holders, followed by 15,000 pencil cases and coin purses the next year, and 12,000 tote bags in the subsequent cycle. Unfortunately, in 2026, no order arrived from Hong Kong.

Traditionally, inabal—an intricate, ikat-dyed abaca textile—was reserved for sacred ceremonies, symbolizing wealth and serving as offerings for rituals and royalty in Bagobo-Tagabawa society. In recent decades, its application has shifted toward decorative home items and modern accessories.

Even in the face of hardship, new products have emerged, new buyers have stepped forward, and inabal weaving endures. Step by step, the Bagobo-Tagabawa women of Upper and Lower Bitaug continue to sustain and elevate their ancestral craft.

Yet, building a sustainable social enterprise is a slow, complex process. Fostering a entrepreneural mindset among weavers remains an ongoing challenge, and our dream of turning the weaving center into the heart of their economic life remains not materialized. Perhaps it is simply a matter of time; reality is rarely as simple as our plans. While the craft thrives as an artisanal tradition, commercial sustainability may remain out of reach unless more younger generation of Bagobo-Tagabawa women embraces inabal weaving.

Or perhaps, in the end, we should refrain from altering what is already sacred, traditional, and deeply rooted.

#Indigenous Wisdome
#SustanaibleFashion
#CulturalPreservation
#Bagobo-Tagabawaweavers
#WIMLERPhil