We are happy to be back in Guatemala. This year we are doing things a bit differently. First, we are excited to be working with a new group of artisan women. We are partnering with the municipality of the town of San Antonio de Aguas Calientes and starting off by understanding their goals, the goals of the artisan women, and after a needs assessment, figure out how we want to best work together. The first group of students who are here have prepared workshops in leadership, group work, English, computers, and photography. Stay tuned to see what we end up working on!

In two weeks we will return to San Lucas Toliman to continue the work we have been doing with Ajkem’a Loy’a. This summer we have a specific goal of producing five finished products to bring back to New York for further market research (or even to present to retailers for orders.) We also want to be diligent about evaluating our work thus far, and deciding on a mid to future term long plan.

If this is the first time hearing about our work, please read this paper which serves as a trip report from last year, and outlines how this all started.

Thank you for reading, and we promise many more images and video entries in days to come!