Help weavers from San Juan la Laguna

Hello dear friends from around the world!

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe during these tough times worldwide.
I wanted to reach out to you to say hi and see whether there is any possibility from you to help.

As you all know, this pandemic is causing more and more people every day around the globe to go from poverty into extreme poverty. Such is the case for the families of San Juan La Laguna, specifically the weavers' cooperative we visited while we were in Lake Atitlán, Ajtooneel Ixoq. They are 52 women, 20 from downtown San Juan, plus 32 from the little mountain hamlets. All of the income these women got came from tourists when they bought their products at their local store. As of now, they do not have any other way to sell their products.

Tourism has been dead from mid March when the President of Guatemala closed the borders. The weavers have not had any visitors nor have they had any sales or income over the past six months. Not only that, but the borders were also closed to agriculture export, so their husband's coffee harvest wasn't sold or exported either, which meant a complete loss of all their investments and efforts for the whole year they had been taking care of their coffee. Truly devastating.

Maybe you remember Catalina. She came to me directly asking for help. She told me they are desperate. They cannot afford to feed their children anymore. They were kicked out of the place they used to rent for their shop since they were not able to pay the rent.

Now I am here, trying to reach out to those lucky persons who have not been significantly affected by this pandemic, to please consider donating something, anything, to these amazing women. ANY amount you can give, will be for ever appreciated. It does not matter how much it is, it will be more than what they have right now.

With the money we raise, they will not only feed their children but also I have agreed to help them to open an on-line store so that they can keep selling their products all over the world, always, even in tough times when there is no international tourism.

I will keep you posted on the course of this fundraiser, I will send you videos when the funds get handed in, and we will also send you the information of the on-line store when we put it together.

From the deepest of my heart and theirs, THANK YOU!!!!!!