e-Commerce Development for Latin American Artisans

We’re thrilled to share some exciting updates with you about our work at SoulGives.

E-commerce Growth and Impact Did you know that e-commerce is projected to grow by more than 10% in 2023? With global revenue expected to reach USD $6.3 trillion and $1.1 trillion in the US, even a small number of online purchases can make a significant difference for Latin American artisans who typically earn $10-$20 per day.

Our Partnership with Community Boost Thanks to your generous donations, we’ve partnered with Community Boost, a digital marketing agency specializing in non-profit organizations. Over the next 12 months, they will help us develop marketing strategies and create engaging content to attract compassionate individuals to our website and mission.

New Additions to Our Product Line We invite you to visit soulgives.org or soulgivescoffee.org to check out our partners and their products. We’ve added new small-farm growers who face similar challenges as our artisans in selling their goods due to remote living conditions and lack of connections with potential buyers.

Meet Gabriel, Our Newest Grower One such addition is Gabriel, a vanilla farmer from Chetumal, Mexico. Gabriel’s family believes in sustainable farming and grows their vanilla in a natural forest setting. Gabriel is currently pursuing a graduate program in agriculture to scientifically validate their farming methods. SoulGives is supporting Gabriel by purchasing necessary instrumentation and selling their vanilla.

Promoting Our Products Online On the business front, we’re partnering with several online companies to promote our artisan and grower products. We’ve recently been awarded a Google Ad Grant, which provides $10,000 in free advertising per month on Google. We’ll also be using Pinterest’s special advertising program for non-profits to promote our handmade crafts.

Your Continued Support Your support has been invaluable as SoulGives continues to work alongside these incredible individuals. With time, we believe that not only will individuals and their families escape poverty, but entire communities will too.

Thank you for being a part of this journey.

Links:

• To read more about Gabriel and his vanilla project

As we hit the midpoint of the year, we can report on several important accomplishments.

We want to follow up with the tea about our website. Thank you all for giving us grace on how long it is taking to get the websites up and going. We would love for you to look at how we have streamlined the site to make it more user friendly and faster to navigate.

We have added new products and artisans, which will be highlighted in the next update of our website.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share stories about two of our partners.

Pedro learned to make barro negro, or black clay, pottery from his grandfather and father. It is made differently from the pottery we are most familiar with that uses a wheel. They take a special clay that is found in their region around Oaxaca, Mexico, and form it into molds to shape the piece. Once the clay dries a bit, they take it from the mold and then before it fully dries, they hand carve intricate designs onto it. The pieces become black when they are polished with pieces of quartz and placed in an oved and fully dried. Pedro had never sold a piece outside of the family shop until we arrived. Now he has learned how to properly pack his goods to prevent breakage, plan a schedule of what he will make to ensure the pieces are ready as needed, and to use a bank account for money transfers. These skills will be passed on to his children as time allows and we expect much more.

Lorena left the big city of San Jose to design print media in the smaller cities of northern Costa Rica. Although she was successful with her business, the pandemic stopped it all. During the downtime she decided to pursue her love of herbal products and began to make natural soaps, lotions, and spices from plants that she could find locally. She also took online courses and night classes to learn what she could not acquire from her mentors. Now she has a promising business and SoulGives is helping her with complying with governmental regulations regarding labelling, contents, and testing for sales outside of her country.

As we say, give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. But stay alongside and ensure he has and can use the equipment he really needs, he will feed himself, his family, and more for generations.

Financially, we have not yet generated sufficient funding to contract with consultants to establish our social media output. With your help, we look forward to the time when the people that are interested in sustainable hand-crafted products can find us.

Links:

• The SoulGives e-commerce website