Our next Guest Blogger is Naomi from MayaWorks. MayaWorks markets the work of Maya artisans who otherwise have no outlet for their handiwork. As a proud member of the Fair Trade Federation, MayaWorks pays artisans at prices they set, provides technical assistance and educational opportunities and meets other Fair Trade criteria. We hope you enjoy Naomi and Vincenta’s story as much as we do!

The Power of Fair Trade: MayaWorks Helps indigenous Artisans Help Themselves

Vicenta is a MayaWorks artisan from the small mountain village of Xetonox (pronounced She-toe-nosh), in Técpan Guatemala. She is a 57 years old and has endured a very difficult life.  Her parents were poor indigenous Maya farmers who could not send her to school past the third grade where she learned to read and write. Like many women in Guatemala, Vicenta is caring for a large family: 8 children, 3 of which are boys and 5 who are girls.

Vicenta has been working for MayaWorks for 12 years. A fiercely adventurous woman, Vicenta created the Xetonox group with her daughter Marcela and has been able to secure an income largely supported by the sale of her handicrafts. She is very happy to have the opportunity to work from home and care for her children instead of spending long days in the field harvesting crops. The elaboration of her products has been her main source of revenue, since it has allowed her to support her children to continue studying and to cover their primary necessities.

Vicenta has received capacity building trainings from MayaWorks so that she has learned to weave 36” width fabric, and creates a number of products including wine bags, kitchen towels and aprons, and fabric by the yard. With the trainings that she has received, she has been able to contribute to her family and to her community.  The technical trainings have helped her improve her work and the quality of her products.

In addition to the work provided by sales of handicrafts, she also receive small microcredit loans from MayaWorks. With her husband, Vicenta cultivates potatoes that she sells locally. The sales from these crops provided income to purchase a used car to transport supplies and tools to the field and to transport her crop to the market.

Vicenta is proud of what she has been able to achieve, especially in a country like Guatemala where being and indigenous woman can have its challenges. Vicenta has greatly benefited from the work that MayaWorks has provided her. It has provided economic development that has benefited not only her family but also her weaving group and her community.

For more information on MayWorks head over to their site. They have beautiful products that help out wonderful global causes. Check back next week for another World’s Working Women posting and don’t forget to sign up for our Ruffle Scarf Giveaway! Keep checking back for more updates on artisans, sustainability and fair-trade.

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Mayu is kicking off this week with a Guest Blogger series we are really excited about. Each week, through the month of April, we are profiling women artisans abroad. We have reached out to some incredible friends and asked them to share their experiences working with women artisans and producers. The stories that came back are amazing and we hope you find them just as heartwarming and inspiring.

Our first Guest Blogger is Holly from Fair Earth. Fair Earth  is a socially conscious and earth-friendly company that produces and markets high quality fair trade merchandise from East Africa. Fair Earth features beautiful products, from baskets to stationary, so please be sure to check out their site and support the artisans. We hope you enjoy Holly and Joyce’s story as much as we do!

Meet Joyce – One of our paper beaders

One of my favorite parts of the time I spend in Uganda working on product development is visiting the homes of our artisans.

Each time I visit I am flooded with a wealth of love, generosity, SPIRIT, and ALIVENESS that makes my heart glow.

A few days ago I visited Joyce and her three sons – Paul, Mark, and Solomon. Joyce is one of Fair Earth’s paper beaders. Incidentally, we are neighbors in Uganda, as their home is just a short walk from where I stay in Luzira.

I was greeted warmly and served a delicious lunch of matoke, pumpkin, rice, and soup upon arriving. I immediately noticed the incredibly creative Christmas decorations in their home – Paul, Joyce’s eldest son, had cut his old school papers into triangular shapes and strung them along the ceiling to create a festive holiday atmosphere. The breeze coming through the door made the papers flutter and cast sparkling shadows throughout the room – it was absolutely delightful.

We spent the afternoon looking through photos, exchanging stories, and then working on new products.

“My mom is a good mom,” Paul told me proudly as we looked through their family photo album. “She takes very good care of us.”

All three boys adore their mom. I gave Joyce some glass beads for her to use in supplementing her paper bead designs, and immediately the boys were looking for colors that would compliment their mother’s dress.

As the stories kept coming, I learned more about their love and respect for her—it is based upon a very real knowledge of how hard their mom works to put them through school. Joyce did not get an education, which means her opportunities for employment are limited. Yet she has worked tirelessly so that her children will have more opportunities than she does.

Her pathway to her current work – making beads from recycled newspapers and magazines – has not been easy. She worked for a year and a half with NO PAY for the current mayor of Uganda cleaning up the streets of developing neighborhoods. I was heart-broken by the story. With no money for transport, she would leave home before the sun rose to walk hours to their work destination, pushing forward upon the promise of pending money, which never came. After becoming weak and sickly from long days of work with no food, Joyce’s mom told her she would die if she continued and taught her how to make paper beads as an alternative. That was eight years ago. I asked her if she took any action to try to get the money she was promised, and she replied, “there is nothing we can do. We are poor and uneducated. We have no power over the government. We would maybe have a voice if we had a lawyer, but we have no money for lawyers. So we just move on.”

These stories of injustice fill me with frustration and ANGER. However, I am also inspired and hopeful to be a part of a fair trade movement which puts people FIRST – a movement where respect, fairness, and integrity take precedence, and where success NEVER comes at the expense of another’s exploitation.

I am also happy to be working with Joyce, and delighted to see the joy and hope not only in her face, but also in the faces of her children!

Thanks for your support,

Sincerely,

Holly Elzinga

Don’t forget to sign up for our Ruffle Scarf Giveaway! Keep checking back for more updates on artisans, sustainability and fair-trade.

Follow us via Twitter@shopmayu, our blog or Facebook!

One of the most popular recipes with the Chiquian’s is pan con queso. Can we imagine a better combination?! Bread and cheese may evoke thoughts of a Parisian cafe, but with a little Peruvian flare, you have an incredible recipe. Unfortunately, pan con queso can not be enjoyed year round, so our artisan friends have to wait until the rainy season to indulge (rain=more food for the cows=more milk=more pan con queso). Pan con queso is super easy to make, all you need are a few simple ingredients. When making this recipe in our test kitchen, we used fresh, crusty, french bread and gruyère cheese from the local farmer’s market. The fresher, the better! The nutmeg adds a nutty, cinnamon taste, really complementing the gruyère. Serve it with desayuno (breakfast) or lonche (dinner). Enjoy!

Pictured below is my host grandmother, Angela, who I lived with while I served in the Peace Corps. She was definitely the expert weaver! In the afternoon, she usually sit inside her kitchen and spin all-natural sheep wool that she or her husband had gathered just days earlier. They owned hundereds of sheep and used their wool to make a variety of items including much-needed blankets to keep them warm in the Anden weather. As you can, the wool comes in a variety of colors, similar to the Alpaca. Unfortunately, Angela did not own any Alpacas, but if she did, the process of shearing, separating, classifying, washing and hand-spinning the fiber would be very similar. To learn more about Alpaca fiber, visit www.whatisalpaca.com!

It all begins with the fiber from the alpaca. While our artisans do not shear the alpaca fiber, dye or weave it, they do these things with the wool from sheep. Since the process is very similar I am going to share photos of our artisans working with sheep wool.

Many of our artisans not only care for their families and knit, but they are farmers as well. They tend to their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, usually with their knitting in hand. Not necessarily that of Mayu’s products since they have the work room, but clothing for their families, etc.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts about the process behind Mayu Hand-Knit Alpaca…