An example of what we do on our own is our attention to the education of the women's children. Although public education is free in Guatemala, there is a registration fee, and often parents do not send their children to school because they cannot afford that fee or to buy the necessary school supplies. So at the start of every school year, Mayan Hands purchases school supplies for all of our weavers' school-age children (almost 400). In conversations with our weavers, we always stress the importance of sending their children to school, at least up to 6th grade —particularly the girls, who in the past were kept at home to help with house chores and take care of younger siblings. (And our two field workers serve as good examples, both having made extraordinary efforts to stay in school and pursue higher levels of education.)
Mayan Hands also works with other organizations that have brought benefits to our weavers.
Sharing the Dream, an organization in the U.S., buys products from Mayan Hands and retails them at a variety of venues around the country. Sharing the Dream sends part of the profits back to the groups, in the form of paying for home improvements such as cement floors (to substitute for dirt floors), stucco covering over their exposed mud walls (looks better and is far more sanitary), gas stoves (in deforested areas where the cost of firewood steadily increases), and new roofs (for leaky houses). Sharing the Dream has also provided scholarships for older children in all of the groups, financial aid that helps them attend high school, often requiring travel to another community.
For the past year, Mayan Hands has been involved in an exciting new project, Oxlajuj B'atz'. Mayan Hands and Maya Traditions, a sister organization, received a generous grant from a private U.S. foundation to develop Oxlajuj B'atz', an educational project for the 300 weavers that work with both organizations. The project offers workshops in 4 main areas: 1. healthcare (includes medicinal plant use, family planning, and pap smears, among others), 2. basic business skills 3. new weaving or other craft techniques, designing and developing new products, and 4. democracy and organization, which covers group issues (including leadership, conflict resolution, and education for peace, after such basic issues as gender awareness and self esteem).
In the past year, the women have attended several workshops in these different areas; for example, they attend monthly sessions on medicinal herbs which will culminate in the establishment of medicinal herbal gardens in their communities; a wonderful basket artist, Michele Hament, came from the U.S. to teach them pine-needle basket weaving; thirty of the women are taking sewing-machine classes that will enable them to sew their cloth into products right in their own communities; the leaders of the groups have received monthly workshops on leadership, etc. The women express their joy at having the opportunity to learn new things, since most of them never went to school.