Project Report
| Oct 31, 2013
Mothers Work to Send their Daughters to School
By Jeannie Balanda | Executive Director
![Silvia and Natali]()
Silvia and Natali
With the money they earn from crafting MayaWorks products, mothers are able to send their daughters to school. Silvia works hard sewing MayaWorks baby bibs so Natalí can go to school. Natalí wants to be a teacher when she grows up. She works hard at her studies and attends extra tutoring classes at the Rosa Moya Center. Rosa Moya is a tutoring center funded by MayaWorks. At the center, Natalí receives extra support in her core subject areas as well as access to a small technology lab. Most families do not have access to technology within their homes so students must rely on centers such as Rosa Moya to help bridge the digital divide.
Silvia and Natalí exemplify what MayaWorks is all about: Women helping women. Mothers helping daughters. Present generations paying it forward for future generations. Silvia wants to assure that Natalí will have access to education to the very end. She hopes to see Natalí graduate college and become an independent woman, a woman who has many choices for the future: having a career that fills her with satisfaction, marrying someone who values her contributions as a woman and starting a family. And should Natalí have a daughter, she will make sure she receives an education too. This is how the cycle of poverty will end: a woman will help another woman.
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Aug 2, 2013
MayaWorks Artisan Partners Open a Small Store
By Jeannie Balanda | Executive Director
![Angela makes products for the MayaWorks store.]()
Angela makes products for the MayaWorks store.
MayaWorks continually works with its artisan partners in Guatemala so that have the tools to work independently. That is why we were thrilled when they approached us about opening a small store to carry their own inventory in Guatemala. Up until now most of the products the artisans craft were for the export market. We worked with them on design and ordered products to meet the demands of the North American market. Now MayaWorks artisans are creating their own designs and selling them to the local market which means they are crafting products for Guatemalan nationals as well as the tourist market. Selling their own designs within country allows artisans to expand their market reach and teaches them valuable lessons about the product development process, inventory management and marketing.
The MayaWorks store is very small and is located in Chimaltenango near our central offices. We also are very pleased that more and more stores within Guatemala are seeking out our lines to carry in their venues. We hope that many tourists will return home with a high quality handcrafted fair trade MayaWorks product!
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May 16, 2013
Access to Education is Precarious in Guatemala
By Jeannie Balanda | Executive Director
![Girls attend the Rosa Moya tutoring center]()
Girls attend the Rosa Moya tutoring center
MayaWorks believes, to overcome poverty, it is vital to educate girls which is why we provide daughters of artisans scholarships to help defray the cost of school attendance. Although education in Guatemala is free, parents must pay a registration fee, purchase school supplies and cover transportation expenses to get their children back and forth to school. In many of the communities where MayaWorks operates, children cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade because there are no junior high or high school facilities. The scholarship that MayaWorks helps overcome these barriers.
MayaWorks also works with local schools to set-up tutoring centers in the village so children have access to much needed academic support services within their communities. Children attend one of five tutoring centers where they get help with their homework, receive extra support in their weak subject areas and have a safe place to meet up with like-minded students who want to excel in school.
MayaWorks has set goals for its scholarship recipients. They must maintain a C average in their classes and attend tutoring sessions regularly. It is our hope that MayaWorks scholarship recipients will continuously surpass Guatemala's high school graduation rate of 17%. Currently, MayaWorks scholarship recipients are graduating from high school at a rate of 36%.
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