Irena’s Love for Guatemala: A Reforestation Story
Read about Y’abals collaboration with Irena DeLave and her organization, Love For Guatemala.
Continue reading »Tag Archives: "fair trade guatemala"
Celebrating World Fair Trade Day!
This past May 14 we commemorated World Fair Trade Day. This was a good moment to reflect on how Yabal is part of this World movement, promoting justice in trading partnerships between producers and consumers with a focus on environmental sustainability. We had the chance to celebrate with women from Chuicutáma, part of the Yabal
Continue reading »New Eyes, New Points
At the beginning of a recent needle-point workshop in the Pacutama community last month, we asked the women why the older members weren’t there.«They have bad eyesight so they figured they wouldn’t come to a workshop on needle point embroidery» to which we replied, «No, tell them to come! We have reading glasses for them!»
Continue reading »mmm mmm good!
As part of this year’s oyster mushroom cultivation program with Yabal’s women weavers in Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, Yabal offered a cooking workshop to give the women new ideas of how to incorporate this nutritious and delicious food into their daily diet. Oyster mushrooms are high in protein, iron, zinc, potassium, folic acid, B vitamins, vitamin
Continue reading »Mushrooms and Weaving?
What do mushrooms and weaving have in common? They’re both great income-generating projects for women in Guatemala! And projects that Yabal supports in our Guatemalan artisan communities. While we’ve had our Yabal weaving brand for over 10 years now, oyster mushroom cultivation is a newer project. The mission of Yabal is to support the economic
Continue reading »Stretching Feels Good
We had the pleasure recently to welcome doctor Kate Colwell to our women’s cooperative meeting in Pactuama, Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan. Kate specializes in helping artisans with healthy body dynamics, posture, self-care, and injury prevention. It was an important workshop to have with our group of 40 weavers and a great first introduction to the idea
Continue reading »Tree Love
Yabal was so happy to have the opportunity this year to coordinate the reforestation of over 4,000 trees with the Czech Republic organization Love for Guatemala and their volunteers in the rural community of Chuicutama. It was a wonderful day of tree love as we helped plant trees in their communal mountain forest nearby the village.
Continue reading »Reflections on Fair Trade
As October is Fair Trade month, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on what Fair Trade means for me and specifically for all of us at Yabal. I think for people that only look at Fair Trade through a business, money-bottom-line lens, it might not be the «smartest» business move. Normally in business
Continue reading »Meet Paulina
An interview by Yabal volunteer, Kellie Shepherd Moeller, and Paulina Guachiac Guachiac (one of the leaders of the weaving cooperative from the community of Chuicutama). There are four young women leaders of the Pacutama/Chuicutama fair trade weaving cooperative of Yabal. They distribute the weaving orders between the rest of the 35 women, calculate prices and thread
Continue reading »Meet Santa
To share with our customers more about the amazing women artisans behind our Yabal Fair Trade accessories line, today, we want to introduce you to Santa, the president of the weaving cooperative of Pacutama in the region of Santa Catarina in the western highlands of Guatemala. Below is the english translation of the interview between Yabal volunteer,
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