Doubling Up: Meet Two Women from a Cooperative Seeking to Partner with MG

Next Thursday, November 5^th, we will be unveiling our Winter Artisan Collection in Napa Valley.  Through the benefit, we hope to raise funds to support our financial literacy and business training programs, increase our inventory fund to finance sales, and provide working capital to purchase materials for new cooperatives, in order to double the number of women’s cooperatives that we partner with in Guatemala. This initiative is an essential part of our efforts to scale our model in order to bring progress and growth to more Guatemalan communities.

Living in Guatemala, I have the daily opportunity to witness the positive changes created by our work here.  This week, two representatives from a jewelry cooperative in Concepción, a highland town in the department of Sololá, came to the office to find out if we could take them on as a new partner cooperative. The women, Candelaria and Isabela Toc, are sisters. After Hurricane Stan, a category 1 storm that devastated the Guatemalan highlands, the land in Concepción was no longer usable for farming. Twenty-five of the town’s women, including Candelaria and Isabela, organized themselves into a jewelry cooperative in order to earn a non-agricultural living.

Destruction from Hurricane Stan

It hasn’t been easy. Without any surplus capital to purchase their own materials, the women of Concepción have been dependent on one buyer who supplies them with beads. This buyer has complete control over the prices he chooses to pay his artisans, and he isn’t in the habit of being generous. Candelaria said that at first he would pay them four quetzals per hour of work. “But each time,” she said, “it was less and less.”

Now they only earn only two quetzals per hour, less than enough money to live on. They heard about Mercado Global through a friend and decided to come try their luck with us. We were pretty shocked to hear what they were getting paid for their work. Women with this kind of determination and artistic talent deserve more.

Mercado Global will pay them up to twelve quetzals an hour, enough to send their children to school, feed their families nutritious food, and save a little to prepare for unforeseen setbacks. We will also supply them with the business training, technical capacity building, and capital to continue to increase their earnings. The women of Concepción don’t have a name for their cooperative yet, but they say they are thinking of calling it La Ceiba, Guatemala’s national tree. How appropriate, for, like the ceiba tree, they will soon come to represent growth in their country.

Candelaria and Isabela Toc, sisters from a jewelry cooperative in Concepción that seeks to partner with Mercado Global

Many communities with which we do not partner have heard of the increased incomes and development projects from which our partner communities have benefited. They, like the women of Concepción, seek to enjoy the new financial opportunities that come from working with us.

This is where our event in Napa Valley comes in. Through the event, Mercado Global seeks to raise $30,000 in order to train new groups and especially to increase our inventory fund so that we can help more cooperatives finance sales. Moreover, the funds will help us provide the necessary materials for the new cooperatives because, as in the case of Concepción, they have no surplus capital of their own. The evening will feature Mercado Global Executive Director Ruth DeGolia, and photographer Suzanne Becker Bronk will show an exhibition of Napa Valley’s own Mercado Global Role Models – women who make a difference in our community – wearing the artisan pieces.

The event will be held on Thursday, November 5^th at the Napa Valley Museum, 55 Presidents Circle in Yountville from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. For an invitation to the event, contact Suzanne Becker Bronk at 707.257.1513 or email at suzanne@photodance.com.