I submitted a proposal to TLC requesting a small investment toward a jewelry-making community project and was approved to receive the funding.

The original idea of the project was at a local community at the church five minutes away from o La Ceiba´s dump  where people go there to look for plastic bottles, useful stuffs from the garbage for recycling so that they can make their daily living, however the pastor from the church stated that recently there were some safety issues  and that he was concerned about it for the tutors, besides that someone was living in the place where the lessons were going to be taught.

I looked for another church of a pastor who works for Carolinas’ healthcare foundation. He liked the project and his wife, Leslie helped me to communicate to the people around the community.

It took place in a really rural community called La Mayo, it is about 40 minutes away from La Ceiba. The project started on Sunday 26th at 9:00 am and it finished at 2:00 pm. There were two tutors giving the classes and I was making sure that everything was well organized, and I also was supporting the ten ladies.

Anahi, one of the tutors that I hired told her mother Mirian about this project and she volunteered for it. She gave a small speech about entrepreneurship and she gave a testimony about her little jewelry business. She also belongs to a small psychological motivation group. 

By lunchtime we served some chicken sandwiches and the ladies brought their children to the church. We did like Jesus with the bread and fish because there were many people.

The ladies learned how to make a purse and two earrings’ style. You may be wondering about the follow up for this project, that is totally understandable. We will go back to do another session in September. We left some products so that they would be able to practice and there are two goals, one personal goal and a team goal.

The personal goal is if someone makes about 5 different products by the time we go back, we will give Lps 200 bonus.

The team goal is to get all of them organized as a cooperative and make products and resell them and save the money, so that they can support themselves obtaining the profits.

One of the learners stated, “People lack of many opportunities and now we can focus in something else, rather than just seeing people passed by and wait until our husbands and children come back home”.

I really want to thank you under the name of these ladies who took benefited of this project, personally I’m truly grateful from the bottom of my heart for the special opportunity that you gave me. I just wanted to let you know how generous and supportive I think you are.

Sincerely,

Yudy Canelas