Empowering Mayan women through ancient textiles

The first semester 2018 has been full of experiences and achievements! We are excited to share with you the past three months updates:

In México, 72% of the indigenous population lives in poverty conditions. We are convinced of making actions as for this metric to change. The way we contribute to this change is by constructing bridges for indigenous women whom have less development opportunities, so that they can improve their lives by self-management and autonomy. There is no possible development without the active participation of women; it is a fact that the reality of the communities cannot be transformed without them.

With the last alliances and new groups of mayan women artisans that have agreed to collaborate with this project, Impacto is now serving close to 600 women from 12 indigenous communities in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico; some of them with the highest poverty rates in Mexico. We have made 42 in-situ field visits in these communities, in which we carried out workshops focused on creativity, product development, pricing, color palettes and tendencies, product finishes and quality.  

Aguacatenango and Larrainzar are two groups that recently join Impacto, the experience of working together and sharing experiences had been awesome. We had been able to construct bridges between the artisan women of Aguacatenango municipality and an international social brand, which allow them to expand worldwide the commercialization of their very high quality hand made products, at fair prices.

With the group of Larrainzar, we are carrying out workshops for 20 women who work with the backstrap-loom, making an excellent combination of talents all together. The goal of these workshops focuses on creativity and tendencies so that artisans can develop new and innovative products focused in a home collection that will be placed for their sell in the “Instituto Casa de Las Artesanías, Chiapas” stores, a government Institute which boosts the development of craft activities through the promotion of production and marketing, preserving and rescuing the historical and socio-cultural elements of the material and immaterial heritage of handicrafts.

With these exchanges of knowledges, besides their great talents and cultural heritage, the artisans women, day by day, are achieving autonomy and self-management as a way of improving their lives, while being able to reduce the cycle of inequality.

You are part of this positive impact in the lives of all this women, their children, their families and their whole communities. An important part of these achievements are possible because of your support. We are confident we will be counting on you, so that NGO Impacto will keep improving thousand of lives by being instrumental in reducing poverty and inequality.

The first quarter of 2018 is about to end. Time goes by so quickly when you love what you do! With tons of dedication, since our last report, we have been working as to achieve significant accomplishments, which we love to share with you. As you are all part of our success:

During this first quarter, we have made 42 in-situ field visits, in which we carried out workshops for Mayan artisan women from the indigenous communities of Aldama, Bochil, Huixtán, Pantelhó, San Juan Cancuc, San Juan Chamula, Santiago el Pinar and Zinacantán, in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. These workshops are focused in creativity, product development, color palettes and tendencies, finishes and quality control. 

Besides the exchange of knowledge between them and NGO Impacto’s staff, these visits allowed us to strength our relationship, while improving confidence and understanding of their needs and their way of approaching life. Our purpose is to accompany women closely in their process of empowerment and self-management. 

Collaborative and solidary collaborations are two of the major pillars in the values of NGO Impacto. Precisely, through a collaborative work with seven different social brands committed to fair trade, artisan women have managed to reach a high-end market, one that allows them to market their products at a better price, greatly benefiting their economy and their families (more so children).

It has been a long road of learning for us and for the Mayan artisan women; we have embraced challenges together as well. Still it has been a great experience to see the results and livelihoods impact through their training and empowerment process; and through the development of innovative high-end handcrafted products.

We feel exited that two new groups of Mayan artisans have started to collaborate with us, from the municipalities of Aguacatenango and Larrainzar. We are very happy to continue expanding our network, to more and more artisan women and to places where development opportunities are limited, but where talented, committed and hard-working women live. We know it represents challenges, but we also know that while working together, we can achieve great things: from one end, to a betterment.  

We could never have made it to this point without your engagement, we are confident we will be counting with your support so that NGO Impacto will keep being instrumental in reducing poverty and inequality in the state of Chiapas, to dignify livelihoods of Mayan women.

2017 is very close to ending; a good time to make an account of our year, and what we had achieved at Impacto’s textile program. It has been a year of learnings, and although our fundraising project is just beginning, it has actually been months of work, commitment and dedication. In this report we want to include the specific actions that has led us to strengthen our experience and improve our work.

 Our activities were focused on implementing workshops, while training 182 artisans from different Mayan communities located in The Highlands of Chiapas, at southern Mexico, in the following topics: tendencies and color, development of new products, costs and sales scenarios, and product quality.

 In the last three months, we had applied workshops in the Mayan indigenous communities of Aldama, Bochil, Chenalhó, Huixtán, Mitontic, Oxchuc, San Juan Cancuc,  Santiago El Pinar, Tenejapa and Zinacantán which has allowed us to make adjustments and improvements in the dynamic, thematic, and didactic materials of the workshops. The work carried-out with the artisan women of these communities in past years has facilitated and enriched the replication process that took place this year. 

A great number of achievements were realized for these groups of artisans:

• Women have begun to identify their skills and strengths and have grown significantly in terms of internal cohesion, having the will to work as a team with stronger organizational structures;
• Impacto managed to place larger orders of handicrafts produced by the artisan women while collaborating with social enterprises: women used new materials and learned new techniques; and because to these commercial collaborations, they generated direct income estimated in $12,000 USD per year.
• Women are very motivated to do textile experiments.
• Women are able to leverage their own creativity while acquiring new tools, which allows them to develop a better product and achieve better sales.

These (non-formal) organizations will help us to implement more specialized workshops in the future. In addition, we have increased the number of Mayan artisans women benefited from the previous year, from 94 to 182.

In summary, the knowledge acquired and the shared experiences were instrumental in developing great products, and in turn allowing artisan women to access a more competitive market represented in an improvement of their economy and the conditions of their children; thus we observed an improvement in livelihoods of women artisans, their families and their communities.

Our mission at NGO Impacto is to combat the inequality gap, building an innovative platform of integral development as an engine of change. Our approach takes time, it is not such an easy path; sometimes we have obstacles in our journey, still, we are convinced that these are opportunities to learn and to do readjustments to improve our Textile Program, while optimizing the impact generated in the long term.

Even though we recently reactivated our fundraising project in Global Giving, we want to thank the contributions we received since reactivation. Each donation is very important for our NGO, allowing us to make a difference in the lives of Mayan women in Chiapas, Mexico.

Thank you! As Mayan tzotzil says: Kolabal!