By Karla Aguerrebere | Project Leader
Over the past three months, NGOimpacto has continued strengthening its monitoring and evaluation system as a core component of its long-term accompaniment model with Indigenous Mayan women artisans in Chiapas, including processes connected to the social enterprise Juxta.
For the organization, data collection is not understood as an administrative exercise, but as a tool for reflection, accountability, and collective learning. Through community-based monitoring processes, NGOimpacto seeks to better understand how women’s participation in creative industries influences economic autonomy, organizational development, access to technology, and long-term wellbeing.
As part of this effort, the organization continues working with the baseline census conducted in 2024 alongside a specialized team from the Faculty of Higher Studies Aragón at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The territorial census included 206 Indigenous women artisans across 10 municipalities in Chiapas and generated key insights that continue informing mentorship, training, and organizational strategies.
The findings confirmed the importance of sustained accompaniment processes:
Beyond quantitative indicators, the monitoring system has helped identify transformations that are often less visible but equally important. Data gathered through surveys, mentorship follow-up, and territorial accompaniment has revealed growing participation of younger generations, increased interest in leadership and organizational roles, and greater engagement with digital tools and collaborative processes.
The organization carries out a triennial census process —the next one scheduled for 2027— allowing long-term comparative analysis that few organizations in the region are able to implement consistently. This process makes it possible to identify correlations between variables such as education, training participation, income generation, and household wellbeing, while also strengthening evidence-based decision making within the project.
NGOimpacto currently uses CommCare, a monitoring platform recommended by the Inter-American Development Bank, which allows secure data collection, storage, and analysis while improving the reliability and consistency of information gathered in the field.
Results & Impact
Beyond quantitative results, the monitoring process has reinforced NGOimpacto’s capacity to understand transformation as a long-term and multidimensional process connected to economic autonomy, collective governance, cultural continuity, and wellbeing.
One of the most important challenges has been building monitoring systems that remain culturally grounded and accessible while also generating rigorous and reliable information for long-term analysis.
The organization has learned that meaningful monitoring requires more than collecting numbers. It requires sustained accompaniment, trust-building, contextual understanding, and methodologies capable of recognizing transformations that are not always immediately visible.
Monitoring processes have also revealed that some of the most important changes occur in areas such as confidence, collective participation, intergenerational collaboration, and women’s involvement in decision-making spaces. These dimensions are essential for understanding long-term sustainability and self-management processes.
Another important learning has been recognizing that data can strengthen organizational autonomy when communities themselves are able to reflect on their own processes, challenges, and possibilities through evidence gathered collectively over time.
In the coming months, NGOimpacto will:
For NGOimpacto, data is not only a tool for measuring results, but a pathway toward long-term self-management and collective decision-making. Monitoring processes help identify how women strengthen their participation across different stages of the value chain —from production and design to organization and commercialization— while allowing initiatives such as Juxta to build stronger foundations for economic sustainability and collective governance.
By understanding how income, training, leadership, technology access, and intergenerational participation evolve over time, the organization can better accompany women in building models of ethical commerce rooted in their own realities, knowledge systems, and aspirations.
Ultimately, these processes contribute to a broader vision where Indigenous Mayan women exercise autonomy and leadership while safeguarding their cultural heritage and advancing toward Lekil Kuxlejal — the Mayan philosophy of harmony and integral wellbeing in personal, family, and community life.
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By Karla Aguerrebere | Project Leader
By Karla Aguerrebere | Project Leader
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