Update on Yabal Communities During Pandemic

Guatemala now has over 7,500 cases of coronavirus. There are multiple reports of inadequate hospital staff, food, medicine, and beds in centers attending patients with Covid-19. Promised government economic help and food aid has managed to reach very few of the most desperate in the country. And the virus continues to increase daily, troubling given

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Yabal Featured on Sustainably Chic Blog!

We’re excited to share with you the lovely feature on Yabal’s Birds Wall-hanging and Birds Pillows in this week’s Sustainably Chic blog. Sustainably Chic is an online destination for sustainable fashion, green beauty & eco lifestyle. It’s a place where fashion can exist responsibly, so we can enjoy the art and love behind the things

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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

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Sneak Peak of Eco Home Collection

You may have noticed that we’ve been a bit quiet this year about unveiling new Yabal product designs for 2018… That’s because we’ve been busy developing a very new product collection, unlike anything we’ve ever done before! In late 2018, we will be unveiling Yabal’s new ecological line of home textile accessories- a lifestyle collection crafted

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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.

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The meaning behind our name

Do you know what “Yabal” means? Yab’al is a K’iche’ word that literally means “a place that gives” which has the dual meaning in the k’iche’ language of “hope”. K’iche’ is an indigenous language spoken by Maya people in Guatemala, mostly in the central highlands region. Most of our women weavers speak K’iché as their first

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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

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